


Operation Phoenix Feather

by ladililn



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Chaptered, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Getting Together, Humor, Sharing a Bed, Undercover, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-04-26 22:42:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5023402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladililn/pseuds/ladililn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake became an Auror so that he could catch dark wizards and look good doing it. Not so that he could go undercover as a Muggle and suffer through Amy Santiago's fifteen-minute lecture/demonstration of something called a "microwave." Was saving the Muggle Prime Minister's life really worth it, especially when he had to pretend to be <i>married</i> to said microwave fanatic Amy Santiago? </p><p>...Yes. Maybe probably definitely yes. But it's gonna take a while for him to get there.</p><hr/><p>Chapter 6: In honor of "The Mattress," this chapter features 5% plot and 95% Jake/Amy goodness. (Aka Help, I've Caught Feelings: The Jake Peralta Story)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

At the end of the day, Jake only had Santiago to blame.

Okay, so maybe he had himself to blame, too, just a little. To be fair to Amy—not that Jake considered “being fair to Amy” a top priority—if he hadn’t accidentally turned Scully purple, none of this would’ve happened. And to be fair to _himself_ , that had been a complete accident. Scully had taken off his shoes again—always a dark time at Auror Headquarters—and Jake was just trying to do the department a solid by solving the Problem of Scully’s Super Smelly Feet once and for all. Definitely his most important case yet, along with the time he helped save Holt’s life and when he’d stopped that lunatic from blowing up Platform 9¾. This was right up there, importance-wise.

Except it had turned out that that type of spell wasn’t exactly Jake’s specialty. (Exactly what type of spell “that type of spell” actually was Jake didn’t know, which, in retrospect, might have been the problem.) So Scully had ended up purple. Not just his feet, either: full-body purple. Worse: his feet still stunk.

Jake had been all in favor of just letting the spell wear off on its own time, no matter how many hours or weeks or years that took, but Terry insisted he fix it. And since the last time he’d tried reversing one of his own spells gone wrong Hitchcock had ended up with gills—again, totally an accident—that meant heading downstairs to get a specially made potion from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Which, in turn, meant passing by Holt’s office.

So: Scully’s fault for having disgusting feet, Terry’s fault for making Jake fix Scully, Holt’s fault for leaving his office door slightly ajar, and Santiago’s fault for audibly— _loudly_ , really, even if you weren’t trying to eavesdrop as you moseyed on by, which Jake definitely Was Not—saying the word “undercover” from within.

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeey,” Jake said, poking his head through the aforementioned slightly ajar door. “Did I hear somebody say undercover? Is there an undercover mission going on? Have I told you about my latest undercover identity? It’s a real winner. I’m _Rolf Dagworth_ , renegade Curse-Breaker. My family owns a diamond mine in New Zealand, where we keep thirteen dragons who turn coal into diamonds with their fiery hot breath—”

 “You really don’t know how diamonds work, do you?” Amy said.

“Not really.”

Jake had managed to sidle his way completely into the room and shut the door behind him, which, by the Rules of Undercover Mission-Related Meetings he had just made up, made him officially in on the plan, no takesies-backsies. He hadn’t expected both Amy and Charles to be there, sitting across from Holt, but it _did_ explain why nobody answered when Jake had said, “Boyle, go get Scully’s potion,” five minutes earlier.

“So, what’s up?” Jake said, trying not to feel hurt that Holt was apparently discussing undercover missions with people who weren’t him. “What’s the assignment?”

“The assignment is none of your business,” said Holt, “as you were neither invited to this meeting nor to enter my office after you interrupted, again, a meeting to which you were not invited.”

“Oh, I will gladly give up my spot to Jake,” Charles said, already half-out of his chair.

“ _Bupbupbupbup_ ,” Holt said, holding up a hand. (Jake really did regret teaching him that.) Charles stopped rising but didn’t sit down, either, hovering in a weird half-crouch position above his chair. “That won’t be necessary, Boyle. I invited you to this meeting and it’s you I want on this mission.”

“Seriously, boss?” Jake said, stepping forward. “You know how much I love undercover missions! You know how good I am at them! No offense, but Boyle is terrible. Remember when he tried to befriend that Death Eater by talking about portobello mushrooms?”

“Not portobello mushrooms, Jake. _Gyromitra esculenta_. A truly succulent fungus prized in Scandanavia, but deadly poisonous if eaten raw. We were in the Hog’s Head—”

“And how did that little encounter end?” Jake interrupted. Charles dropped his head.

“He tried to force feed me a raw _Gyromitra esculenta_ and I had to go to St. Mungo’s.”

“Mhmm.”

“Enough.” Holt pointed to the door. “Peralta. Out. _Now._ ”

The fact that Holt was speaking in single-word sentences was enough to tell Jake that the hopes and dreams of Rolf Dagworth: Renegade Curse-Breaker were about to be dashed like so many diamonds against the side of a New Zealand volcano. (Okay, so Jake _really_ didn’t know anything about diamonds. Or volcanoes. Or New Zealand.)

He was on his way to making a dignified, graceful, and definitely not remotely petulant exit when _Amy Santiago_ , of all people, spoke up.

“Actually, sir,” she said, “I was going to mention it before he came in, but—sir, I think Jake could be useful for this case.”

Jake stared at her in frank astonishment. Holt’s eyebrows went up by about half a millimeter, which Jake took to mean he was having a heart attack.

“How so?”

“Well, sir”—Jake made a mental note to jinx Santiago at the next available opportunity so that every time she meant to say _sir_ she actually said, oh, maybe _fart-monster_ or _your royal hotness_ —“you mentioned Gina Linetti as our primary contact on this case, right?”

Holt inclined his head slightly. “Yes, formerly of the Muggle Liaison Office.”

“Right. Well, Gina can be…difficult…and, um, she already doesn’t like me very much.”

Amy went a little pink as she said it. Gina tended to make lightening quick judgments based on what seemed to all non-Gina people totally random and arbitrary criteria, and stick to those judgments come harpies or high water. Jake could only imagine how infuriating such committed and seemingly senseless animosity must be to a perfectionist like Amy.

“And—well, I don’t know how she feels about Charles…”

Boyle made a face halfway between a wince and a…facial shrug? Was that a thing? “Ehhh. I mean, we had an intensely sexual relationship for a while—”

“Ew,” said Jake, overlapping with Amy’s “Ugh” and Holt’s “No.”

 “—but we broke things off about six months ago. And then our parents got married, and now whenever we go on a family vacation together she finds one of those Muggle police officers and tells them that I won’t stop following her around and sniffing her hair. And then when they arrest me—”

“Please stop talking,” Jake said.

“Okay, so Gina likes…neither one of you,” Holt said to Amy. “And Jake…?”

Jake stepped forward. He put both hands on Holt’s desk and looked him square in the eyes. Amy, who had opened her mouth to answer Holt’s question, made a sound like a wounded cat.

“Gina. Linetti,” Jake said, going for the most Holtian inflection he could manage, “ _Loves_ me.” He straightened up again. “I _got_ her the job in the Muggle Liaison Office to begin with! I’m the one who _told_ her about magic in the first place! I—”

“—broke the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy?” Holt said. Jake found himself inadvertently imitating Amy’s dying cat sound.

“The point is, sir,” Amy broke in again, “I actually think Peralta could be a big asset in working this case.”

As she spoke she kept her eyes firmly on Holt, not Jake, as though not to give him the satisfaction of openly acknowledging his…assethood. He stuck his tongue out at her profile; judging from the way her fist clenched, she had excellent peripheral vision. Judging from the way Holt cleared his throat, he just had excellent vision in general. Jake put on his best Mature, Confident, Totally Innocent of Any Misdeeds Professional Auror face.

“Well,” Holt said slowly, looking at Jake with what he could only assume was a critical eye (unless it was a constipated eye? Wait. Rewind and rephrase). “You two do work very well together. You’re probably my best pair of partners in the office.”

“Tied with me and Jake, but go on,” Boyle said. Holt hadn’t actually stopped talking for Boyle’s interjection, which made it extremely easy for him to continue.

“And while I chose you two”—referring to Boyle and Santiago, now—“for an obvious purpose, I do see the benefit of being able to draw on an already positively established relationship between Peralta and Ms. Linetti. Hmm.”

Jake held his breath. He was certain this time: this was Holt’s cost/benefit calculation face, and interrupting him at such a time could have as potentially disastrous consequences as challenging a basilisk to a staring contest. (Which was honestly what making eye contact with Holt felt like ninety percent of the time anyway.)

“Santiago, do you think you’d be able to help Peralta through? Assist and educate him, keep him from getting into any serious trouble, while also maintaining the necessary focus on your own job?”

“Yes, sir.” Amy sounded resolute—probably because the way Holt had phrased the question made it sound like a challenge, and however else Jake may’ve been able to make fun of her (and there were at least a million ways), he had never known her to back down from a challenge. It almost made Jake grin, except for the whole thing where Holt apparently thought that Jake needed to be “helped” and “educated” on an undercover mission, which, what? Jake was a highly experienced Auror. Jake had been on plenty of undercover missions. Jake had been on the force for longer than Amy, even—by a year, but still. He wanted to protest, but the dream of Rolf Dagworth: Renegade Curse-Breaker was _so close_ to being realized. Best to bite his tongue for now and get annoying later, when it was too late to get rid of him. (This was the exact strategy Jake employed to maintain most of his friendships.)

Holt let out a sigh.

“Okay then. Boyle, you’re free to leave. I do apologize for kicking you off this case.”

Charles waved an airy hand.

“No problem, sir. I’m actually in the midst of this whole thing involving kelpies and a gnome trafficking ring, so it’s really all for the best.”

“Right. Well, not a word of this case to anyone, understood?”

Boyle mimed taking out his wand and sealing his lips shut. Or at least Jake assumed he _meant_ to mime it and just _accidentally_ ended up casting it for real, a development he communicated to the rest of them through a series of increasingly alarmed _mmphs_. Holt performed the countercurse and waved Boyle out of his office in the same motion. Once the door was closed again, he leveled Jake and Amy with a serious expression. (Well, serious-er.) Jake tamped down his inner victory punch at having actually succeeded in worming his way onto this case so that he could pay attention to what exactly this case was.

“Peralta, are you familiar with the Muggle Prime Minister?”

“Um,” Jake said, thrown. “I’m aware that one exists? Maybe? Or is this a trick question, like when Santiago told me about ‘Stephen Hawking?’”

“Jake, I _told_ you, he’s a real existing person—”

“Cut the act, Amy! I no longer buy your lies!”

“The Prime Minister’s name is Kevin Cozner,” Holt interrupted. “And we believe he’s in serious danger from members of the magical community. I need you two to go undercover to investigate this threat.”

Jake barely resisted letting out a squeal of delight. _This_ was exactly the sort of thing he had become an Auror for: high stakes, someone’s life hanging in the balance, high-profile figures needing Jake’s badass protection from danger lurking behind every corner, high chance of explosions and cool-but-not-disfiguring injuries.

Holt motioned for them to sit down. His own chair scraped the floor as he pulled it closer to his desk. He folded his hands in what was unquestionably a Storytelling Pose; Amy already had out a blank sheet of parchment and a self-writing quill that literally quivered in its readiness to jot down notes. Jake relaxed, certain she’d catch all the important information and then some. If there was one thing their particular partnership was good for, it was getting him out of the boring bits. Santiago seemed to love boring. Probably had some sort of fetish for it.

“Santiago has already heard some of this, but I’ll start from the beginning,” Holt said. “The threats come back to a fringe group of witches and wizards who call themselves the Society of the Pixie.”

“Society of the Pixie? That’s not exactly a terrifying name.”

Amy made a face. “Clearly you’ve never met a pixie.”

“What? Come on! Little blue things with wings? Pixies are adorable.”

“Yes, pixies are adorable,” Holt said, completely straight-faced. It was…disarming. “From a distance. However, pixies do have a well-earned reputation for serious mischief, and it is this quality that the Society of the Pixie strives to emulate. They are a group who believes the International Statute of Secrecy, which keeps the wizarding world completely separate and secret from the Muggle world, is outdated and obsolete.”

“So?” Jake said, ignoring the stink-eye Amy was giving him for his continual interruptions. “Like half the Wizengamot believes the same thing these days. Which is _exactly_ the kind of trenchant political point I was trying to make when I told Gina—”

“How old were you when you told her?” Holt asked.

“…Eight?”

“Right. Yes, you are correct that public opinion in the magical community about the validity of the Statute has been shifting in recent years, but I’m not talking about reasoned political debate. The Society of the Pixie takes its inspiration from, appropriately, a Muggle network known as ‘Anonymous.’ Like that group, the Society’s members wear masks in public—”

“Like Death Eaters?” This time it was Amy who interrupted.

Holt shrugged. “Sure. Or like some children on Halloween, or like dwarves attending formal functions. Who it is ‘like’ does not matter; the purpose of the Society’s masks, like most masks, is to conceal its member’s identities. We—meaning primarily Jeffords, up until recently—started monitoring them closely several months ago when witches or wizards wearing pixie masks started showing up at Muggle events and causing mayhem. Impish—if you’ll excuse the mixed-species metaphor—pranks, mostly, things that did no one any serious harm, like turning a room full of Muggles’ hair blue, or letting a Clabbert loose at a memorial service. These things were little disasters for the Liaison Office, of course, and required a lot of cleanup, but they were mostly taken as they were meant: as regular, obnoxious statements of the Society’s message.”

“What message?” asked Jake. “‘We’re dicks’?”

“No,” said Amy, rolling her eyes, while Holt simultaneously said, “Yes.”

“Oh,” said Amy. Her quill hesitated over the parchment, as though unsure whether it should write down _We’re dicks_.

“For a while, we believed that Society members were little more than, as you say, dicks. They wanted to make a point about Muggle/magic interaction, and they did so in as disruptive and infantile a manner as they could devise. However, within the past six weeks or so, their actions have seemed to…escalate. First, they began targeting the Muggle Prime Minister with their pranks, making their every move all the more high-profile and thus more difficult to deal with. Second, the nature of these pranks turned more malicious. Switching people’s arms and legs, turning all the water into vodka at a charity run, and vast application of the stinging and sea urchin jinxes.”

“Sounds more pixie-ish to me,” Amy muttered. Jake shot her an amused glance.

“Our current theory is that the Society has fallen under new, more militant leadership. They certainly seem to be gunning for Minister Cozner, and their activities have increased in frequency as well as intensity. Most worrisomely, we have recently intercepted a letter which suggested the Society is planning something ‘big,’ something that has the potential to be legitimately dangerous.”

“And you need us to find out what that something is, and stop it?”

“Yes. That one letter was the only one we’ve been able to get our hands on so far, but we cannot let it be the last.”

“Great.” Jake’s leg was jiggling, an uncontrollable sign that he was ready for this meeting to be over so they could get started on the actual crime investigation and criminal bringing-to-justice of this whole operation. “So how do we infiltrate this Pixie Society? Is there a contact person, a headquarters, a secret knock? Or something?”

“Jake,” Amy said.

“Peralta,” Holt said, which had the weird effect of making it seem like Amy and Holt had decided to say Jake’s name together and divide the effort between them. “You’re not going undercover as a member of the Society of the Pixie. I want you with Kevin Cozner at all times. You’re going undercover as Muggles.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm literally writing as I go along, so updates may not be incredibly regular, but this idea has been pestering/delighting me for so long that I finally gave in and let it happen. (Plus, it turns out canon Jake/Amy only heightens my shipping thirst rather than satiate it. I need mooooaaaaaaarrrrrr.)
> 
> Kudos are lovely, but comments make the world a better, kinder, happier place! ♥


	2. Chapter 2

There was only one bedroom in the apartment. Which contained only one bed.

“Oh, did Holt not tell you?” said Gina. “ _Awkwarrrrrrrd_. This was all the Ministry’s budget could cover. You guys are gonna have to pretend to be married.”

“Um,” said Jake.

“It’s fine,” Amy said. She had on her Brave Face, the same one she used when facing down a dark wizard or heading into the office kitchenette knowing Hitchcock had been the last person to use it. “It’s for a mission. We can make it work.”

“Totally,” Jake agreed. “We can absolutely share a bed. It’s no problem whatsoever. We’ll just sleep back to back. That way only our butts will touch. Or we could go head to feet! That could work great. It’d be, you know, that sort of yin-yang shape?”

“Sure,” Gina nodded, mercifully ending Jake’s blathering. “That sixty-nine shape. I get you.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Amy said, throwing her bag on the foot of the bed, then stepping back into the tiny kitchen. “The important thing is that it’s close to 10 Downing Street. And it has a nice view!”

Jake looked skeptically out the single window in the kitchen/living area to the street below. From this angle, it looked like the sidewalks were crowded with slowly moving umbrellas, which occasionally dodged in front of even more slowly moving cars, which followed the curve of the truly incredibly slow river. Still, Jake figured it beat the enchanted windows in Auror headquarters, which had somehow gotten stuck on “giant hail interspersed with occasional blinding flashes of lightning” for the last two weeks and which the Magical Maintenance Department still hadn’t gotten around to fixing. At least this place had blinds to close.

“So!” he said, clapping his hands together and turning back to face Amy and Gina. “Where is the _telephone_?” As an aside to Santiago, he added, “I’m kind of a phone expert. Dial tones, busy signal, leave a message after the beep. No big deal.”

He grinned modestly, certain she’d be incredibly impressed by his in-depth knowledge of Muggle technology. Weirdly, she didn’t really look it. Gina, on the other hand, flat-out laughed at him.

“Oh, _honey_ ,” she said. “We have come so far from our days of making prank calls from the Linetti landline to anybody we could find in the phone book with a funny name.”

“Sylvester Stools and Janet Storkmuncher,” Jake said. Somehow Amy didn’t look very impressed by _that_ either. What did it _take_ with this woman?

“Let me introduce you to a little something called a cell phone,” Gina said. She produced a shiny, metallic rectangle from her back pocket and held it up like she was showing off some long-lost piece of treasure that had once belonged to Merlin. Sounds of an angelic chorus actually emanated from the gold-colored rectangle.

“Wait, are you doing that?” Jake asked Amy. She shook her head.

“It’s the phone, Jake.”

“Right. Of course. Totally the phone. I knew that. They must have, uh, updated the dial tone sound since the late nineties.”

“Oh, you sweet summer child,” Gina said. Somehow it didn’t seem like a compliment. She produced two more shiny rectangles from her purse, handing the white one to Amy and the black one to Jake, who turned it over and over in his hand. It was surprisingly slippery, and it didn’t really look anything like the phone Gina used to have at her apartment growing up. Which was the talky part and which was the listening part? Where were the buttons or the antenna?

“Gina, are you sure this thing will even work around us? And shouldn’t we, you know”—he gestured towards the rest of the room, which was filled with various metallish boxes of different sizes and colors, some of which he vaguely recognized from the Linetti household and some of which were utterly foreign—“start unplugging this stuff, so it doesn’t go haywire when we do magic?”

Amy and Gina both stared at him, in much the same way that Amy and Holt had both stared at him the other day when he’d asked how they went about infiltrating the Society of the Pixie. It was not a look Jake was particularly fond of.

“Jake,” Santiago said in that same _I’m-afraid-you-might-genuinely-be-kind-of-stupid-but-I’m-not-going-to-let-that-stop-me-from-being-condescending_ voice, “we’re undercover as Muggles. We’re not going to be _doing_ magic.”

“Well, sure,” Jake said. “Not _out there_.” He waved his hand to encompass all the _out there-_ ness in the world, like the sidewalk and number ten doughy street and those Muggle pubs that didn’t stock any butterbeer or firewhiskey, not even for ready money. Santiago just looked confused. “But _in here_ ”—another wave, taking in the tiny apartment with its single bed and plethora of strange devices—“I mean. Right?”

He was beginning to think he wasn’t right.

“You’re not right,” said Amy. This intensified Jake’s suspicion.

“Jake, this is deep cover,” stressed Gina. “What if, through some wacky series of investigative circumstances, you have to bring a Muggle here for questioning? Or your neighbor comes over to ask for some sugar and passive-aggressively complain about the noise levels? What are they going to think when all your electronics are unplugged and the dishes are washing themselves in the sink?”

“Well—”

“I mean, why do you think you guys even have to pretend to be married? It’s in case we have to explain why you both live in the same one-bedroom apartment. It’s obviously not because you’re in any way plausible as a couple.”

“Which one of us are you insulting when you say that?” said Amy.

Gina rolled her eyes. “Both of you.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Jake said. “We never worried about any of that stuff when we were growing up. And you _were_ my neighbor.”

“Wait,” Amy said. “You two grew up in the same building?”

“Yes, obviously,” Gina said. “God, Amy, keep up.”

“The building was owned by a husband-wife couple,” Jake explained. “He was a Muggle, she was a witch, so they were cool with accepting rent in either Galleons or…liters?”

“Pounds.”

“Right. Anyway, maybe half the tenants were Muggle and half were wizards, and we didn’t have _any_ Muggle appliances in our apartment, and we did magic all the time, and none of the Muggles ever figured it out.”

“Um,” Gina said, “I did.”

“Uh, only because I let you,” Jake said, hoping he sounded more assured and honest than he felt. Which was basically zero, because he was telling a blatant lie.

“No, I _made_ you tell me after I figured out there was some weird ish about you. And I was _eight_. I mean, I definitely have mad deductive skills and I’m a Hedy Lamarr-level beautiful genius, but honestly? That mystery was so easy to solve even Santiago could’ve done it.”

“Hey!”

“And if you don’t think Muggles in that building were constantly having to be Obliviated,” Gina continued, “you are dead wrong. The only reason they never got me is because I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut about what I knew. Not like little old Mrs. Lovejoy in 3B. Amateur.”

“We just have to be as careful as possible,” Amy said. “We really can’t risk arousing any suspicion, since we don’t know who could be a Society member.”

“So, what, we just have to live like Muggles? That’s insane! How are we going to survive? What are we going to eat? What is this?” Jake pointed at one of the rectangular boxes that was sitting on top of the plastic counter in the kitchen. “What are all these numbers for? Why are these other numbers glowing? Is this some sort of math machine? Does it make you do arithmancy to get to whatever’s inside?”

“That’s a microwave.”

“That means _nothing to me!_ ”

“Well, too bad,” Santiago said. Which seemed a little harsh, given that Jake was on the verge of having a full-on freak-out, because he had gotten a _D_ on his Arithmancy OWL, damn it, and if Muggle life was all talking into shiny rectangles and negotiating with glowy boxes to get them to reveal their secrets then Jake wasn’t entirely sure he could handle it. “This is why Holt wanted me and Charles on this mission. Because I’m Muggle-born and Charles has a Muggle dad. But you wanted in on this case, so now you’re just going to have to let me teach you how to use a microwave.”

“Hey, you wanted me on this mission too,” Jake protested.

“I for one am thrilled that we got Jake instead of Charles,” Gina said.

“Thank you, Gina.”

“Watching Jake fail at using the subway and try to have a conversation with a horse is going to be hi-lar-ious.”

“Not helping, Gina. And that was one time. I was fourteen, we had just learned about Animagi at Hogwarts, and he was a very intelligent-looking horse.”

“He kicked you in the ass.”

“He _lightly tapped me_ in the _general thigh region_ because I was bending over to—”

Gina’s “phone” made a sound like a toad that had just been stepped on, which was apparently the result of it vibrating against the countertop.

“Hold on, I got a text message,” Gina said, turning her eyes to the phone with no apparent urgency.

Amy took the opportunity afforded by Gina’s preoccupation to sidle closer to Jake and say, “Kicked by a horse, really?” in a low voice. She looked far too amused for Jake’s taste.

“You’re one to talk,” Jake muttered out of the side of his mouth. “Remember when you were interrogating that hag and you said she had something on her face and it tried to wipe it off for her and it turned out it was a giant wart?”

“Well, remember when you stupefied a troll and then it fell on top of you?”

“Remember when—”

“It’s from Holt,” Gina interrupted. “We have a meeting with the Minister at 10 Downing in twenty minutes.”

“Holt knows how to send messages over a telephone?” Jake said, annoyed. “Merlin, is there anything he can’t do?”

“No, there’s not,” Amy said, smug. She grabbed her purse. “Let’s go.”

“Already? The meeting’s not for another twenty minutes.”

“We can’t Apparate there, dumb-dumb. We have to take Muggle transportation.”

 _Dumb-dumb_? Jake mouthed, incredulous. She angry-shrugged at him—somehow Amy Santiago could make “angry-shrugging” an actual thing—but at least had the decency to look ashamed of herself.

“Hey, both you idiots,” Gina put in, smirking in her terrifying Gina way that indicated there was some unpleasantness approaching, “not so fast. We gotta get you ready first.”

Jake and Amy exchanged confused looks, which Jake figured at least made them finally on the same page about _something_.

“What?” Amy said. “We’re already wearing Muggle clothing.” (That, at least, was something Jake didn’t mind: the wizarding world had made some merciful strides into modernity fashion-wise in recent years, and frankly he always found it a bit annoying to wear a robe over his jeans and button-up at work. Stupid Holt and his stupid dress code.)

“You’re married, remember?” Gina said. “You know what that means: RING BLING!”

She pulled a jewelry box out of her purse and handed it to Jake; the two matte gold rings nestled inside were mercifully conventional. Jake was just relieved to actually know how something worked.

Or maybe he thought too soon.

“Which finger is this supposed to go on, again? Ring finger, obviously, but right or left? And…which is the ring finger? It’s not the thumb, right? That would be crazy.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “Just let me do it.”

She took his left hand and slid the thicker of the two rings onto his third finger. It wasn’t until she’d started to slide it on that Jake realized how _wedding-_ y that gesture actually was; judging from the look on Amy’s face, she hadn’t either, but it was too late to turn back now. (Judging from Gina’s giggle, she had anticipated the whole situation and just let it happen. She was holding her phone in a way that led Jake to suspect phones had somehow developed the ability to take photographs since he had last interacted with them, in addition to their new choir-singing and frog-croaking abilities.)

“No, please, I insist,” Jake said, when Amy, looking ever-so-slightly pink (although that was probably just his imagination), reached for the second ring. If there was one thing Jake was good at—although “good” might not be the word most other people would choose—it was taking a slightly awkward situation and leaning so far into it that everyone stopped feeling awkward and became annoyed instead.

“Amy Whatever Your Middle Name Is Santiago,” Jake said solemnly, holding Amy’s left hand in his own and looking deep into her eyes (which looked back at him with an expression somewhere between longsuffering and resigned, with a side of trapped and—yes!—annoyed). “With this ring, I do thee fake weddeth, until solving this case and arresting the bad guys and leaving this hellhole to return to civilization do us part, in sickness and in health, in morning breath and having to share a bathroom, in using the telephone and accidental butt-touching. Amen. God save the queen. Rekt.”

“Rekt?” Gina repeated. Jake grinned.

“Yeah. I heard a bunch of teenagers saying it when I was in Muggle London a few weeks ago.”

“Are you sure they weren’t yelling it? Maybe at you, after you’d been kicked in the ass by a police horse?”

Jake was saved having to answer by Amy, whose borderline neurosis about punctuality for once came in handy as she grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him out the door. Gina followed, still laughing. They locked the door with an actual physical key, reopened it when Jake realized he’d left his new “phone” inside, relocked it, and finally headed off to the Prime Minister’s house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Future chapters should hopefully come much more frequently; I had to have a sit-down this week and sketch out a rough plot outline, because it turns out that just making up a detective story as you go along is a pretty bad idea. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who left comments on the first chapter: each comment really does bring me so much joy and inspiration, and probably contributes to that whole world spinning 'round thing. (Plus, especially for a story that I'm still in the process of writing, comments let me know what's working and what people like to see!) ♥


	3. Chapter 3

The journey to the Prime Minister’s house was…traumatizing.

There was one point, between all the broken turnstiles and brightly colored maps and moving staircases that were not at all like the ones at Hogwarts and whatever the hell an Oyster card was—there was one point where Amy actually reached out and grabbed Jake’s hand, as though he were a wayward toddler, to guide him through the heaving crowds. Well, _guide_ wasn’t quite the word. _Drag_ or even _dragoon_ might be more appropriate, and the latter was a word Jake had only recently learned wasn’t just a way of saying _dragon_ in a funny accent.

(“What accent would that even be, Jake?” Santiago had asked him. “Swedish?” he’d tried. “ _I like to train the dragoons, yah? Very nice, hon hon hon—_ oh no, I went French. Hold on. _I vant to train ze dragoons_ —where was Dracula from, again?” Amy hadn’t spoken to him for the rest of the day, but that was probably just a coincidence.)

He made a point of letting go of Amy’s hand once they were in the “subway car,” since she didn’t show any sign of letting go herself. Gina raised an eyebrow at him, but he looked away. It was one thing for Amy to explain to him what a microwave was, as she had ~~promised~~  threatened to do in excruciating detail at some near-future date. Intellectually, Jake understood that he was out of his depths in the Muggle world and that it was up to him to follow Amy’s lead—Amy who had spent eleven years not knowing magic existed at all, who still had Muggle parents and seven Muggle brothers and Merlin only knew how many other Muggle relatives she visited with alarming frequency. Jake had never even taken Muggle Studies. But it was an entirely different thing to feel like Amy was the commanding Auror on this case and Jake was just some burden she had to drag around and pretend to be in love with. Jake wasn’t really used to not being automatically amazing at stuff. (At important stuff, anyway, Auror-related stuff. He had zero problems with being un-amazing at Divination, no matter how much Nana used to bemoan his lack of “the inner eye.”)

On the bright side, the guards at 10 Downing Street wore _hilarious_ hats.

“I like your hat,” Jake made sure to tell the guy who was patting him down for “firearms or explosives,” which was apparently a thing. He received a grunt in reply. It was a little weird having some random guy’s hands all over him, but it still beat the Probity Probes that Gringotts occasionally used and which the goblins sometimes saw fit to stick in some very real places.

There was one breath-baiting moment when the guard ran his hands over Jake’s wand, which he’d tucked down the side of his jeans. The guy lifted Jake’s shirt, pulled the wand out a little bit—and then slid it back into place and moved on. Had he been told about magic? When Jake looked to his left, he saw almost the exact same scenario play out with the woman who was patting down Santiago. He caught Amy’s eye for a split second, just long enough to register that she was as wary and confused as he was, which was comforting, at least.

Gina, meanwhile, who had an ID card giving her security clearance that apparently obviated the need for a pat-down, was busy staring at her phone. Jake was beginning to think that the thing had her under some kind of thrall, maybe even a curse.

Whatever type of enchantment it was, it at least left Gina with enough of her wits about her that she was able to lead them through the gleaming hallways and up the plush carpeted staircases to the Prime Minister’s office. She paused outside the imposing double doors to introduce Jake and Amy to a man sitting at a desk.

“This is Wayne,” she said. “He does something something, I don’t know.”

“I’m the administrative assistant,” Wayne said, rising to shake hands. With the flash of inspiration that always signaled one of Jake’s Really Good Ideas—and _all_ his ideas were Really Good Ideas, no matter what Holt (or, for that matter, Amy (or Gina (or Rosa (or Terry, frankly (or even Charles, that one time))))) said—Jake realized that now would be the perfect time to take his new identity for a test drive.

“It is _so_ nice to meet you, sir,” he said, because apparently his Muggle self was super polite, whatever, he was going with it, he was on a roll, he was in character and totally crushing it. “We're Minister Cozner’s new policy advisors. Mr. and Mrs. Ssssssantiiiiiiago. Santiago.”

He smiled winningly, hoping that would distract from the fact that he’d stretched two of the four syllables in “Santiago” to about ten seconds apiece. He refused to even look at Amy. He could guess her expression well enough: not unlike the one she’d given Charles last Christmas when he had actually, through some hilarious misunderstanding involving a genie and a couple of Christmas crackers, grown two heads.

“Okay,” Wayne said slowly. He looked down at a file on his desk. “It’s just, it says here that you’re _Amy_ Santiago and Jake _Peralta_. The, um, minister's new policy advisors.”

“That’s right,” Amy broke in. “That’s us. It was nice meeting you!”

“We are married, though,” Jake said. He felt the pressing need to save the situation, despite the face Gina was making at him behind Wayne’s back which Jake was _choosing_ to interpret as _Yes, Jake, great job, please continue!_ “I just haven’t officially changed my name yet. But I’m toooootally gonna. Yep. Jake and Amy Santiago. So.”

“Cool,” Wayne said. “Um, nice to meet you.”

“ _So_ nice,” said Amy, and once again she grabbed Jake by the hand and physically _dragooned_ him, this time right into the Prime Minister’s office.

“Ah, Gina,” said the Prime Minister, apparently. “You’re right on time. Wonderful.”

The Prime Minister’s office was super fancy—like, super-duper fancy—which Jake supposed was only to be expected. On one end of the room, a marble fireplace was lit with a crackling fire despite the day’s heat. Just left of the mantelpiece, tucked into a corner, was a portrait of a wizard Jake recognized at once: the first Minister of Magic and founder of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Ulick Gamp. (He had a special fondness for Gamp, since Jake’s demonstrable encyclopedic knowledge of Magical Law Enforcement history had been one of the things that had first won over Sophia, along with his incredible Exploding Snap _skillz_. Although, now that Sophia had dumped him—five weeks and one day ago, not that Jake was keeping track—did that mean he hated Gamp now? Whatever, he’d figure it out later.)

The portrait was familiar, at least. And the tea that the Prime Minister was pouring for Gina couldn’t be that different from tea in the wizarding world, right? The only impediment to testing this theory was that the Prime Minister didn’t actually show any signs of offering a cup to either Jake or Amy, which was a _little_ awkward, Jake thought, but then, what did he know about Muggle customs? Different cultures did things in different ways. A house-elf had once burst into tears when he’d held a door open for her. The world was a weird and wacky place. Evidence: there was an honest-to-Merlin real live bird of prey just chilling on the Prime Minister’s desk. Was _that_ normal? Did Muggles habitually keep falcons as pets? If so, they were a lot more badass than Jake gave them credit for.

“It’s lovely to meet you, sir,” Amy was saying. Jake cursed himself for not having followed through on that jinx yet. “My mother is a huge fan of yours. She won’t stop talking about how much better you are than the last Minister.”

“Well, that’s very nice,” the Prime Minister said, although he didn’t exactly look super enthused. He shook both Amy and Jake’s hands very quickly.

“Captain Holt should be here in just a minute,” Gina said, eyes on her phone. The Prime Minister looked surprised.

“Is Minister Gerber not coming?”

“No, he’s busy dealing with some Romanian goblin crisis. Holt is the Head of the Auror Office.”

“He’s really very good, sir,” Amy put in, smiling in that way she always smiled at authority figures, the _Please like me please like me please like me_ way that drove Jake insane.

“Hmm,” the Prime Minister said. Amy’s smile faltered.

“He’s the best,” Jake said, because for some reason he felt compelled to back Santiago up on this particular point. “He’s put the most dark wizards in Azkaban than anybody else in the department combined. He even caught the Mermaid Maimer when no one else could—and then, no big deal, I kiiiiiiinda saved his life when the Mermaid Maimer was released and—”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” the Prime Minister cut in, “but I would prefer not to hear details, thank you. This office has a ‘no magic talk’ policy, besides, of course, what's strictly necessary.”

“Ah,” Jake said, like he totally got it, even though he totally absolutely did not. What sort of person didn’t want to hear about magic—specifically, magical crime? In-depth knowledge about magical crime was the cornerstone of Jake’s charm. Possibly even the entire foundation of Jake’s charm.

“Have you met the falcon?” the Prime Minister asked, turning to pick up his own teacup from his desk and nodding towards…his bird? Jake darted a quick look at Gina, who didn’t even look up from her phone. Either she didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary or the thrall was complete and she would never again make eye contact with a living person. It was a toss-up.

“I don’t think so?” Jake said. Amy had her Brave Face on again, which Jake figured meant she was steeling herself to march right up to the Prime Minister’s pet bird and shake its claw.

“How’s it going?”

The falcon was gone. A fully-grown adult man wearing a leather jacket sat on the desk where the bird had been, one hand raised in a casual wave.

Amy screamed. Jake bellowed in an extremely manly manner, as he was sure any Pensieve-assisted replay of the moment would attest (please do not check up on that).

Gina looked up from her phone enough to register her annoyance, an expression mirrored by the Minister himself. The man on the desk looked incredibly unflappable (…unflapped?), considering that he’d just turned from a _bird_ into a _human_ and now had two people screaming directly in his face _,_ right into where his _beak_ used to be.

“Well,” the bird-guy said, in what was kind of a drawl but somehow even cooler sounding, “I guess it’s a good thing we soundproofed the office.”

Amy let her hand drop from her mouth.

“Oh my god,” she breathed, “are you _Dave Majors_?”

You could have knocked Jake over with a feather plucked from Majors’ plumage.

“Guilty,” the guy said.

“Oh, wow,” said Jake, totally involuntarily. “That is so cool.”

“How did you know it was me?” Majors asked, standing up and stretching a little, leaning back against the Minister’s desk in a casual pose. He probably wasn’t capable of doing anything in a non-casual manner. He probably even had sex casually. Not like _casual sex_ , but _meaningful sex_ , just, you know, casually. In a good way.

Jake’s train of thought had gotten a little away from him.

“I keep up to date on the Animagus Register,” Amy said, because of _course_ she did, Amy Santiago was incapable of doing _anything_ casually, ever, probably including sex, which—wait, what had his point been again? “And only two of the current Animagi in Britain take the form of birds, you and the Vulture.”

Jake made a face, as he was obligated by basic morality to do whenever the Vulture was mentioned in his presence.

“But I thought you were in Borneo?” Amy said.

“I was. And before that, I was in Patagonia, refereeing for the World Cup. Before that—”

“You were head of the Auror Office in Germany,” Jake broke in. “At least, I think that’s what I heard from someone, but I could be wrong.”

He shrugged, a totally casual shrug, because unlike Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta could Do Casual. For instance, Not Casual would be telling Majors that he’d gotten a subscription to _Der Zauberer Zeitung_ and learned translation spells just so he could keep up on Majors’ career.

“Are you going to be working the case with us?” Amy asked. She looked so excited Jake was genuinely concerned she might punch herself in the face.

“Nah,” Majors said. “Minister Gerber asked me to come back to the UK so I could be Minister Cozner’s magical bodyguard. I’m just the muscle.” He spread his arms wide with a self-deprecating smile; Jake took advantage of the opportunity to admire Majors’ very real muscles. “I’m sticking with this guy”—he jerked a thumb at Cozner, who didn’t seem to object to that form of address at all—“in case there are any direct magical threats on his person. I'm the emergency back-up guy.”

Amy was nodding fervently. Jake could actually see the exact moment she realized how overeager she appeared and adjusted course—cocking her hip a bit, resting her hand casually on the butt of her wand, schooling her features into an expression of cool-but-detached interest. Jake scrunched up his face at her and shook his head a little, trying to communicate _This is not working for you, you giant unchill loser_. She glared in return. Majors didn’t seem to notice the exchange, but then, given that he was the best Auror the world had ever seen probably, Jake was willing to bet he noticed _everything_.

“Of course,” Majors said, “if you need someone to help you out, I’d be happy to be a resource. But I think we all know too many potioneers can spoil the cauldron. Besides, I can’t leave the Minister’s side. Lately I’ve been focusing on the instinctual roots of magic, you know? Wordless, wandless, early dueling practices. That sort of thing.”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Jake said, wondering whether he could get away with telling people he’d been focusing on _the instinctual roots of magic_ without sounding like a total douche. Maybe he could try it the next time Holt told him he needed to practice his defensive spells. “Cool. Coolcoolcoolcoolcool.”

Poor Amy “The Overeager Overachiever” Santiago was saved from whatever humiliating thing she was about to do next, Jake assumed, by the sudden flaring of the fire, which doubled in height, hissed loudly, and turned emerald green. A moment later, a hulking figure stepped off the hearth and resolved into Captain Holt.

“Ah, Detectives,” he said, brushing soot off the sleeves of his robe, “you made it. And Gina. Excellent.”

Holt strode over to Cozner, his hand outstretched.

“Prime Minister. I am…Raymond Holt.”

“Kevin,” said the Prime Minister. “Cozner.” So they both had a tendency for inserting enormous and incredibly unnecessary pauses into their speech, then.

The two men gripped hands and locked eyes.

Gina briefly looked up from her phone, then looked back down.

Neither Holt nor Cozner moved.

Majors coughed.

The handshake continued.

“Oh my god,” Amy squeaked, barely above a whisper.

Jake had to agree with her on this one. Wuntches aside, he had never known Holt as one quick to judge, nor as someone who harbored strong feelings of enmity towards anyone, even the criminals he had caught. This weird posturing standoff, however, was casting everything Jake thought he knew into doubt—not only re: Holt, but also re: the progression of time and the meaning of life. It was a _really_ long handshake.

_CRACK!_

One of the logs in the fire gave off a sound only slightly quieter than the explosion of an Erumpent Horn (which at least made Jake feel better about that ~~screaming~~ manly yelling he had done earlier). This, finally, seemed to break the tension in the room—in fact, Jake had a sneaking suspicion it was _caused_ by the tension in the room, a magical side effect which mainly afflicted pre-Hogwarts witches and wizards but could reemerge at the most inconvenient times—and Holt and Kevin broke contact in both the physical and visual senses.

Clearing his throat, Holt said, “Minister Gerber sends his regrets. Hopefully I will be an adequate substitute for his presence.”

“I’m sure you will be,” Kevin murmured, sounding a bit hoarse himself. Jake was just glad to see that, _un_ likeHolt and a certain witch whose name rhymed with both “lunch” and (to Holt’s particularly inexplicable glee) “bunch,” Holt and Kevin were capable of maintaining a civil discourse despite their weird animosity.

“Would you like to sit?” Kevin gestured toward the couches and chairs arranged around a low coffee table. They all did, except Majors, who remained leaning against the desk.

“Let’s keep this brief,” Holt said, which coming from him was such a redundant statement that Jake almost laughed. Santiago elbowed him in the side, which was a little unfair, because he hadn’t even _said_ anything. He’d been about to, sure, but that still made it a preemptive jab, and thus against the rules of Auror Conduct which for once Jake hadn’t made up himself. He opened his mouth to complain as such, but a (again, preemptive!) glare from Santiago made him think better of it.

(Just wait until he preemptively used all the hot water in the shower, and she was left to deal with the Muggle reality of not being able to use _califacum_.)

“Santiago, Peralta, I trust everything went well with moving into the apartment?”

“Yes, sir,” Jake said. “Um, the marriage thing was a surprise.”

“Yeah, it was very…” Amy seemed at a loss for words, like she wanted to raise a complaint about the whole thing but couldn’t figure out how to do it without disagreeing with her Supreme Mugwump (as she’d referred to Holt on more than one occasion, though never to his face). If there was one thing that Santiago hated more than surprises, it was insubordination. 

“Yes?” Holt prompted.

“But, uh, the rings fit really well!”

Surprising absolutely no one, Amy had shot right past any possible complaints and into the more familiar territory of excessive compliments.

“Yes, they are enchanted to fit well,” Holt said, unmoved.

“You missed a hell of a wedding,” said Gina. “I mean, totes adorbs _…_ is _not_ how I would describe it. It was a mess. Not a hot one. Just kinda sloppy and sad.”

“But…” Holt said, leveling his _I am your commanding officer_ look at both Jake and Amy, the look that always made Jake want to confess his sins and beg for a lenient time-out. “You will make it work. For this mission.”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

“We have cast some light memory modification and reality-warping charms to establish evidence of your false history within Muggle records. You are a husband-wife team of policy advisors who have recently returned from working in the United States.”

“Sir, with all due respect, that’s not a very…detailed cover,” Santiago said.

“True. The vagueness of the claims is in keeping with the charms in place. Your cover is designed to slip beneath Muggles’ attention, to be uninteresting and ambiguous enough not to warrant questioning. The brilliance behind these types of charms, as first put into practice by Mnemone Radford, is that they play upon the duped party’s own lack of interest in other people’s lives. That allows them to be cast with a very light touch. The downside is that in the event you encounter a particularly curious Muggle, a person with genuine interest in getting to know you, your story will look more and more suspicious with every question they ask.”

“So we just have to keep our answers vague and boring?”

“Precisely.”

“Should be easy for Santiago.”

“Shut up, Jake.”

“I can’t say that I enjoy the exploitation aspect of this plan, but it seems like it will work,” said Kevin.

“When we were coming in, we got patted down by the, uh, funny hat guys, and they definitely saw—and felt—our wands, but they didn’t say anything. Do they know about us?”

“No. That’s part of the memory charm. There’s a mild strain of _confundus_ built into the spell.”

“Cool,” Jake said, because the last thing he wanted was for Holt to go off on one of his spiels about the beauty and elegance of spell construction. The guy had some weird interests. As far as Jake was concerned, spells were spells, and coming up with them was someone else’s problem.

“Does anyone know about us, sir, besides the people in this room?” Amy asked.

“No. And we want to keep it that way.”

“My last assistant found out about magic after this Pixie Society’s hilarious biting doorknobs ‘prank,’” said Kevin, dry as a desert.

Jake winced. He had arrested countless perps on charges of Muggle-baiting, and it never stopped being disgusting to him.

“Before the Obliviators got to him, he was…very distraught. He quit, for one thing. He also threatened to jump out the window and seemed to think he was a chicken.”

“Maybe he thought he could fly,” Jake suggested. “You know, thus the window jumping.”

“Chickens don’t fly, Jake,” Amy said.

“Uh, wrong,” Jake said, in his smuggest tone (which was pretty damn smug). “Common misconcept—”

“Enough,” Holt said.

“—ion. Sorry.”

“Given the previous assistant’s…indisposition, and the recurring nature of the Society’s attacks, Ministers Gerber and Cozner agreed it would be best to let that man go and hire someone who could handle navigating both the Muggle and magical worlds.”

“So they gave me Gina,” Kevin said, shooting Gina an honest-to-Merlin affectionate smile. She beamed.

“I knew it!” Jake said, narrowly resisting the urge to slap his knee. Despite this incredible act of restraint, he drew weird looks from everyone in the room—including Majors, whom he’d actually forgotten was present. (The guy had clearly gotten top marks in Stealth and Tracking.)

“Gina’s new job,” Jake clarified. “I just thought it was weird when Holt mentioned the other day that Gina was _formerly_ of the Muggle Liaison Office, because a) I got her that job, thanks very much, and b) I hadn’t received an invitation to a _Gin for Gina_ night, which is what Gina calls the parties she holds every time she makes a change in her life or has something to celebrate, like a promotion. Or a haircut.”

“You know it, girl!”

“Gina’s position here is temporary,” said Holt. “Until we get this Pixie situation under control.”

“Although it has been nice to have an inter-ministry liaison who is, er, a real person,” Kevin said, lowering his voice slightly, as though he were afraid Ulick Gamp’s portrait might hear and get offended (which was actually a very realistic concern).

“Well,” Holt said, “Maybe we can work something out where she works part-time here and part-time with us,” which Jake thought was surprisingly nice of him.

“The important thing is that all my Muggle friends are super impressed by how I’m blowing up,” said Gina. “I ran into my seventh grade history teacher at the grocery store and he was all, Was that you I saw standing behind the Prime Minister at the EU summit? And I was all, What now, Mr. Lutz? Bet you regret saying that my report on the Civil War quote ‘bespeaks worrying levels of narcissism, indolence, and flagrant disregard for authority, which could have a disastrous effect on her future job prospects,’ end quote.”

“…Anyway,” Holt said. “As I was saying before…” He trailed off, looking a little lost. Gina had that effect on people sometimes.

“You were talking about the need to keep knowledge of the situation from spreading to other members of my staff,” Kevin supplied.

“Yes. Thank you, Minister.”

“Please, call me Kevin.”

“Kevin.”

“You can call him Raymond,” Gina told Kevin. Holt didn’t object. Jake gave all three of them a weird look.

“Sir?” Amy tried. She had her notes out from the last meeting they’d had. “I was thinking about the different lines of inquiry we could start with on this investigation…”

Holt seemed to shake out of some weird reverie.

“Right. One of your top priorities—and further reason, beyond the obvious, for absolute circumspection in this case—will be to ascertain the existence of a mole.”

“The _existence_ of a mole?” Jake repeated. “Not just the identity?”

“I’m not certain there is a mole,” Kevin said. “However, these Pixie people have a recurring tendency to show up promptly in places they shouldn’t even know I’m going to be at, unless they have access to my schedule. And the only people who have full access to my schedule are the people with offices in this building.”

“They might simply be using magic to communicate and travel quickly,” said Holt, “but we don’t yet know for sure.”

“Of course, my staff members are screened very carefully for criminal records and psychiatric issues. I’m afraid we do not, however, screen for magic.”

“So we need a list of everyone who does have access to that schedule,” Jake said.

Amy nodded.

“If you have any reason to suspect someone—or someones—in particular, we’ll start with them. Otherwise, we should start with the people closest to you and work our way out.”

“Like that Wayne guy we met outside,” Jake said. “What's his deal?”

“Wayne Tercell has worked for me for seven years,” said Kevin. “I’d say I trust him implicitly, but then, I would say that of every member of my staff. So perhaps I’m not the best one to ask.”

“Perhaps not,” Jake agreed. “Who else?”

“Grant Knox,” Majors said. “Head of the Prime Minister’s security force. He’s a good dude.”

Jake nodded.

“Gotta be thorough.”

“You should also check on Joseph, Lawrence, Eric, and Nancy,” Gina said. “Actual policy advisors. There’s gotta be something suspicious going on there. They’re four of the most boring people I have ever met, and I'm including Santiago.”

“Thank you? I guess?”

“Okay, well, that’s a good list to get us started.”

“That, and—the letter?” said Amy.

Holt took out his wand, then seemed to think better of it; he pulled a piece of parchment out of his inside breast pocket instead, and spread it on the table.

“This is the only letter we have been able to intercept so far. Peralta, you asked before why you couldn’t go undercover as Society members instead of as Muggles. While that would certainly be the preferable option, their circle has proven surprisingly difficult to penetrate.”

“Don’t they wear masks?” Amy said. “Couldn’t we just show up to one of their events in a mask and blend in?”

“From what we’ve been able to observe, members screen each other at events to avoid just such infiltration. They perform a password of sorts, a spell for which only they know the incantation, and which changes every time. Without access to their communication, there’s no way for us to get that information.”

“So.” Jake began ticking items off on his fingers. “We need to look into this mole issue. We need to get ahold of the Society’s correspondence. And we need to follow any possible leads from the letter we already have.”

“What’s the timeline on this?”

“We’re not sure,” said Holt. “Judging from the letter, which the two of you can read yourselves, we should have a few weeks, maybe a month or two.”

“I should think ‘the sooner the better’ would be a good timeline,” said Kevin.

“Well, lucky for you, ‘the sooner the better’ is my middle name.”

“Really?” said Amy. “Your middle name is ‘the sooner the better’? Jake ‘the sooner the better’ Peralta? Are you sure you thought this through?”

“It was a metaphor.”

“Do you even know what a metaphor is?”

“ _Yes_. It’s like a chameleon ghoul, but with words.”

“ _What_?”

“If we’re done here,” Kevin said, standing up; Holt quickly followed suit, which caused Amy to shoot up like a cork, and then they were all standing, “I have a community center to visit.”

“Excellent,” said Holt, although why that was either excellent or unexcellent Jake didn’t know. “Good meeting.”

“It was a great meeting, sir,” Amy said. Jake rolled his eyes.

“Mmm, it was pretty boring, actually,” Gina said. Amy gave her A Look. Jake gave her a high five.

“Gina, would you mind showing…my new _advisors_ the way out?” Kevin said.

Jake didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but he was starting to suspect Kevin didn’t like him. Or Amy, for that matter. And that was in addition to his abundantly clear dislike of Holt. If he didn’t act so inexplicably fond towards Gina, Jake would assume that this Kevin Cozner, Supreme Leader of All Mugglekind or whatever, just didn’t like people. Maybe _that_ was why Majors spent most of his time here in bird form (and was in fact currently pecking at the sugar bowl on the Minister’s tea tray).

The important thing, Jake thought as Gina ushered them out the door, was that he now had some clear, concrete goals. Jake “the sooner the better” Peralta (suck it, Santiago) excelled under the pressure of goals, the higher the stakes and lower the time limit the better.

Jake Peralta’s Awesome, Absolutely Achievable, Downright Admirable Goals:

  *       Figure out who the mole was/if there was even a mole at all
  *       Hack into the Society of the Pixie’s communication network
  *       Study their one piece of evidence in detail, picking out any possible clues
  *       Bring down the Society
  *       Save the Prime Minister
  *       In doing so, save all of Muggle and Wizardkind, and in a way, if you thought about it, life itself
  *       Win an argument with Amy Santiago



“Oh, kiddo,” Gina said when he told her his list, while Amy was busy having a conversation with a staffer about some sort of strangely named sport that Jake was 99% sure she had only engaged in so she could show off her Muggle bonafides. Gina patted him on the arm. “One thing at a time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so incredibly much to all those who left comments on the last two chapters!! I'm genuinely honored that anybody (a few anybodies, even!) is enjoying this silly little story I dreamt up in the depths of my Jake/Amy obsession (ongoing) and my HP fandom (eternal). 
> 
> (Also, feel free to come talk to me at my [tumblr](http://rubbishyrubbishyrubbish.tumblr.com). It doesn't even have to be about this story; you can just say hi or squee about B99 with me!! I need some partners-in-squee, stat. ♥)


	4. Chapter 4

Jake didn’t actually succeed in using all of the hot water when he took a shower. The stuff just kept coming. He wasn’t sure if that was down to improvements in Muggle technology, or if he had just grown up in a particularly crappy apartment building. Probably the latter.

When he did emerge, with still-damp hair he wasn’t allowed to magic dry, he found Amy sitting at the kitchen table, reading the Pixie letter. She flashed him a quick smile, then went back to staring at the letter. It wasn’t very long; Jake wouldn’t be surprised if she intended to commit it completely to memory before bedtime.

“Do we have anything to eat?” Jake asked, opening the door of what he was pretty sure was called a _refriggerator_. It was cold and well lit inside, but completely empty.

“I ordered pizza,” Amy said.

“What? From who?”

“A pizza place. They deliver.”

“You mean they’re coming here?”

Jake’s first instinct was to look at the window, but that didn’t make sense: Muggles couldn’t fly. Well, they _could_ , but not in the individual and casual way a wizard could.

“Yes, they’re coming here. In Muggle London you can get practically any kind of food delivered right to your door in less than an hour.”

“You sound like a travel brochure,” he said, pulling out the seat next to her and resting his feet on the table. She shoved at his legs, which weren’t even _on_ her notes, but were apparently too close for comfort.

“Still, that's super convenient,” he allowed. “We should have that in the Wizarding world. I’d love it if Honeydukes delivered.”

“If Honeydukes delivered, you would be dead within a month, because you wouldn’t eat anything but Sugar Quills and Fizzing Whizbees.”

“You know me well.”

“What do you think these letters at the bottom mean?” Amy said, seguing suddenly into Work Talk. Luckily, their shared ability to pivot on a dime between regular talk and Work Talk was part of what made them such a crack team.

“Read it to me again,” Jake said, through a mouthful of Chocolate Frog. (He wasn’t an idiot: he knew how to pack for a potentially weeks-long undercover Muggle mission. He had enough chocolate stored away to get him through weeks of potentially terrible Muggle food and guaranteed terrible Amy Santiago food.)

“The whole thing?”

“Yeah.”

“To Kneazle,” Amy read aloud. “Didn’t have the chance to catch you after the meeting, and now I’m home and Dad is cleaning the whole house, so I’m sending you this owl to say I agree with what you said about the pass-spell issue, despite whatever Crup says. It just doesn’t make sense to keep doing it his way. Anyway, the important thing is to prepare for THE BIG DAY, which should really be our number one priority and forget the less important stuff. Hopefully even Crup will see that as we get closer because there’s still a lot to do and we can’t keep wasting our time on stupid little issues like pass-spells when the answer is so obvious within Society doctrine and it’s such an easy fix, but I guess some people just like being prats, haha! From, Knarl. RRTFON. Jake!”

“What? It does not say ‘Jake.’”

“No, I meant—Jake! You weren’t supposed to bring anything magical!”

“I didn’t,” Jake protested.

Amy gave him A Look and held up his Chocolate Frog Card. The redheaded witch in the picture screamed and flailed, which at least gave Jake a clue as to Amy’s objection. He took the card from her and flipped it over.

“What if a Muggle saw that?” Amy said disapprovingly. “Now we have to hide or get rid of it, and we can’t use magic. Maybe we can burn it in the Prime Minister’s fireplace.”

“Hey, look at this,” Jake said, grinning. “‘Dymphna Furmage, born 1612 and died 1698, famously abducted by _pixies_ while on holiday in Cornwall and lived in mortal dread of them thereafter. Failed to persuade the Ministry of Magic to have all pixies humanely destroyed.’ Hey, humanely, at least. That’s nice of her. Weird coincidence, though.”

“Jake.”

“Right, sorry.”

Jake dropped the card and scooted his chair closer to Amy, so that they were sitting knee to knee and could look at the letter together.

“Okay, one thing at a time,” Jake said, thinking out loud as much as he was talking to Amy. “Kneazle and Knarl. And Crup. Code names?”

“Obviously. And they’re all magical creatures. But why these names in particular? What’s the connection?”

“They all start with a K?” Jake hazarded. Another Look from Amy. “Well, a K _sound_. And don’t give me that. There’s no judging in brainstorming! Sometimes the stupidest theories turn out to be right. I’ve built my career on that.”

“Fine. _Maybe_ it’s the K-sound thing. Maybe…” Amy trailed off a little. “Okay, a kneazle is a kind of cat, a crup is a kind of dog, a knarl is like a hedgehog. They’re all pretty small creatures—smaller than people, anyway. They’re all rated XXX by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.”

“I’m concerned that you know that off the top of your head. I’m deeply concerned for you, Amy.”

“Shut up. Didn’t you take Care of Magical Creatures too?”

“Yeah, but I quit after fifth year.”

“Me too,” Amy sighed. “I might have to get my copy of _Fantastic Beasts_ from home.”

“Sure, you can keep it with my Chocolate Frog Cards.”

She rolled her eyes, but made a note on a fresh sheet of parchment:

            _knarl, kneazle, crup. k-sound? size? xxx? find FBaWtFT_

“Hold on,” Jake said. “What was it you said? A kneazle’s like a cat, a crup’s like a dog, a knarl’s like a hedgehog. They’re all _like_ something. A Muggle something—I mean, they all have non-magical creature equivalents. Maybe that’s it?”

“Maybe,” Amy said. She had that animated look that Jake took to mean she thought he was onto something, although it could have just been excitement that he’d come up with a better theory than _they all start with K_. “The Society’s whole MO is that they want to reveal themselves as wizards, right? And Muggles and wizards look completely the same on the outside.”

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “Have you seen Scully? He doesn’t even look fully human.”

“On the other hand,” Amy said, ignoring him, “the whole MO of crups is that they hate Muggles, right? That doesn’t necessarily seem to jive with the Society’s, uh, ‘doctrine.’ They’re not Muggle- _haters_.”

“Aren’t they, though? The stuff they’ve been doing to Cozner hasn’t exactly been super nice. Side note, do you think Cozner likes us?”

Amy’s lips disappeared into a thin line.

“I don’t know,” she said, after a several seconds-long pause. Jake wanted to tease her for caring too much, but judging by her expression she actually cared even _more_ than he’d anticipated, and might well forget the whole undercover mission and blast him with an Unforgivable Curse if he tried.

“Alright, moving on,” Jake said quickly. “Knarl didn’t have the chance to catch Kneazle after the meeting, fine. We know there’s meetings, they disperse, people go their separate ways, whatever. _Now I’m home and Dad is cleaning the whole house_. Underage wizard?”

“Could be, or could just be an adult who lives with their dad. Lots of witches and wizards have been moving back home after Hogwarts lately, with the economy and everything.”

“I blame Gringotts,” Jake said. Which was what he’d been saying since people started talking a lot about _the economy_ a few years ago, because he figured it made him sound well-informed and world-weary when in fact he had no clue what exactly the problem with the economy was.

“Also, if Knarl _is_ underage, shouldn’t they be at Hogwarts?”

“Could be homeschooled.”

Amy made a noncommittal noise in response. There was something about this, Judgment-Free Brainstorming or whatever you wanted to call it, that was one of Jake’s favorite aspects of the job. It wasn’t something easily understood by non-Aurors, especially when the sessions dragged on without resolution or grew especially frustrating, but Jake found even those occasions weirdly invigorating. The harder the solve, the sweeter the payoff. (His number one favorite aspect of the Auror gig, of course, was the kicking ass and taking names part. Never got old, that.)

“Either way, it’s a weird detail to include, isn’t it?” Amy leaned into his space to point to the relevant sentence, and he was hit with a wave of her floral-scented shampoo. Of course, it was the same shampoo he had just used during his shower, since he certainly hadn’t thought to pack any, but he had a feeling it smelled better on her. Although that probably made no sense, and he should probably stop thinking about it.

“I mean,” she continued, as though Jake hadn’t been sidetracked by Shampoo Thoughts, “‘I’m home and Dad is cleaning the house, _so_ I’m sending you this owl.’ How are those things at all connected? Why the _so_?”

Jake had no ready answer for that, and Amy scribbled _why the so?_ into her notes. They went through the rest of the letter in the same way, bouncing theories off each other and making notes of the things they wanted to follow up on. (Okay, so Amy wrote down most of the notes, but Amy also wasted the most time complaining about the letter writer’s “appalling penchant for run-on sentences,” so Jake figured they were even.) Their discussion of _RRFTON_ had mostly devolved into a squabble about whether they were allowed to use cipherspecs—which were technically an enchanted object, but didn’t require any further spells to work—when there was a knock at the door.

On pure instinct, Jake reached for his wand. Almost as quickly, though, he remembered, and snatched his hand away again, not wanting to receive yet _another_ Look from Santiago. Instead he strode to the door and opened it, just to prove what an excellent undercover Muggle he could be.

The (presumably not undercover) Muggle standing on the other side of the door was a pimply teenager of short stature, who did not look any particular way about Jake opening the door with such aplomb.

“Ah, hello,” Jake said, thinking back to the way the Prime Minister had greeted them as his guidance for Muggle niceties. Although in retrospect the Minister had been almost entirely focused on Gina to the exclusion of both Jake and Amy, so possibly he wasn’t the best model to base manners on. “You’re right on time. Excellent.”

“Pizza for Mr. Santiago,” the teenager said. Jake blinked.

“Uh, that’s me,” he said. To make up for his hesitation, he held up his left hand and tapped the ring. “See? Super married.”

The teenager didn’t respond to that, just thrust the warm cardboard boxes he was holding into Jake’s arms.

“Thank you,” Jake said. (Jake Santiago: Exceedingly Polite Policy Advisor to the Muggle Prime Minister was certainly no Rolf Dagworth: Renegage Curse Breaker. It figured that Holt would assign him to go on a mission where the primary directive was “be as boring as possible.”) “Would you like to come in for tea?”

 _That_ finally got a response from the teenager, but judging from the weirded-out expression he adopted beneath those pimples, inviting pizza delivery people in for tea was not an established component of Muggle etiquette. Damn.

“That’ll be seventeen ninety-nine,” the teenager said, whatever that meant. Payment, obviously, but 1799 _what_?

“I believe my lovely wife has the money,” Jake said, turning to look at Amy and hoping to Merlin she actually did. She looked like she was barely suppressing laughter, which was a little annoying, but on the bright side, she _didn’t_ look like they were going to have to Avada Kedavra this kid so that he wouldn’t expose them to the Muggle police as fake Muggles who didn’t have cash on hand. Which was good.

Amy paid the teenager with little slips of colored paper, and miraculously, he went away. Jake carried the cardboard boxes to the little couch that was squeezed into one corner of the apartment; when he sat down, he had a nice view of the cloudy sky through their one window. Amy plopped down next to him and flipped open the lid of the top pizza box.

“Mr. Santiago,” she said, offering him a slice of pizza on a plate she had apparently procured from somewhere.

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her eyes were all wide innocence. “Here, have a napkin.”

“Your name just came into my head before mine did,” he said. “Is that so weird? Don’t answer that.”

Amy was even worse at suppressing her smirk than she’d been at suppressing laughter. “I thought it was very progressive of you.”

“We’re just lucky I managed not to smush our names together in some sort of unholy union. I was _this close_ to introducing us to that Wayne guy as Mr. and Mrs. Santialta.”

Amy made a face. “That sounds terrible.”

“I know. What about the other way around—Peraltalgo? Peraltiago?”

“Kind of a tongue-twister. Too many syllables.”

“I don’t know, I kind of like it. It sounds like the name of a Spanish bullfighter. Perrrrrrrrrrraltiago. Merlin’s beard, this is good pizza.”

“I know,” Amy said, through a mouthful of the stuff. “It’s incredible.”

“Why haven’t wizards figured out how to make pizza like this? We can send a wizard to the moon on a Cleansweep Six, but we can’t make a decent pizza.”

“It is weird both how far ahead and behind the wizarding world manages to be,” Amy said. “But no wizard has ever been to the moon on a broomstick. You know that, right? That’s something _The Quibbler_ made up.”

“Sure,” Jake scoffed. “Next you’ll be telling me there’s no such thing as a Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. What do you call that thing?”

He gestured at the shiny black box directly in front of them, only partly because he knew that Santiago could be distracted from anything if it gave her a chance to be a know-it-all.

“That’s a television,” she said, because, yep. Jake Peralta: Right All the Time. “It’s like radio, but with moving pictures.”

He nodded.

“I remember what it _does_. Gina’s mom used to watch a lot of stories about women who were sad because their husbands had left them and their kids were pregnant and on drugs and their sister was sleeping with their boss and also it was Christmas. Fun fact: one of those stories first taught me what a miscarriage was!”

“That is not a fun fact.”

“Fair.”

Amy picked up a second slice of pizza, way more careful not to get grease stains on the couch or coffee table than he was being. She drew her legs up on the couch and angled her body towards Jake, so that she was facing his profile.

“What’s up?” he asked, after it seemed like she was just picking at the crust on her pizza and not taking advantage of a prime opportunity to lecture Jake about Muggle technology. Amy Santiago passing up on the chance to deliver a lecture about _anything_ was cause enough for concern.

“Hmm? Oh, I was just wondering whether I might have time to visit my parents during this mission. Or if I should, I guess.”

Jake shrugged. “We are in Muggle London. Might as well, right?”

“Yeah, but we’re also supposed to be undercover.”

“That’s probably more reason to see them,” Jake pointed out. “Or at least talk to them. We’re supposed to be undercover, but your family already knows that you’re not a policy advisor to the Muggle Prime Minister. Let alone married to me. That’s actually a liability. What if they see you on the TE like Gina’s teacher did?”

“TV,” Amy said. “But that’s a good point.”

“Please. All my points are good.”

“I’m not even gonna touch that.” Then, to his grin and almost-speaking, she said, “And you’ve already made that joke, so you’re done.”

He closed his mouth obediently, still grinning. She got up and stretched.

“I think I’m gonna turn in,” she said.

“Okay. Uh, do you want me to take the couch, or…?”

Amy waved a hand that was a little too vigorous to be nonchalant, but maybe that was just Jake projecting.

“Don’t be stupid. We’re both adults, right? Sort of, in your case? We can handle it.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “I mean, what’s there even to handle?”

“Exactly,” she said, emphatic. “I just sleep on one side of the bed, you sleep on the other. We just don’t touch. Or if we do touch, who cares? We’re adults.”

“Exactly,” he said, encouraged by how much they agreed. Both of them were nodding at this point, which only helped to emphasize how nonchalant and agreed they were. “We just sleep back to back, no problem. Or we sleep front to front. Or front to back. It doesn’t matter. Who cares? We’re adults.”

“Exactly.” Once again, Jake thought that Amy looked a little pink, but it was probably just the lighting. She gestured slightly awkwardly toward the bedroom, to which the one and only tiny bathroom was attached. “I’m just gonna—brush my teeth.”

“Awesome.” Jake hadn’t meant to sound quite so enthusiastic, but then again, why not? Dental hygiene was very important. Jake had once gone to St. Mungo’s to be treated for chicken pox and instead been treated to a half-hour lecture on the importance of flossing. There was a point in there somewhere, probably, but Jake was getting tired and couldn’t quite flush it out.

After waiting a respectful amount of time for Amy to do whatever lady stuff she had to do in the bathroom (that towel on the head thing, maybe, although Jake had always suspected women kept those up using magic) and get into bed, Jake got ready himself. He found Amy stretched out on the left side of the bed, facing away from him, pretty much as close to the edge as she could get without falling off. He tried to follow her example as he clambered between the sheets, but the bed was surprisingly tiny, like it had a reverse Undetectable Extension Charm on it.

His fingers itched to grab his wand and _do_ something about it, anything to alleviate this weird tension, but of course he couldn’t. This would have been weird with anyone, he reminded himself. Okay, maybe not Gina or Charles or—well. It definitely would have been weird with Scully and Hitchcock. Which meant it was perfectly normal that he felt so weird about being in bed with Amy. Because Hitchcock, Amy, and Scully were practically interchangeable. Obviously.

The ring was cold against Jake’s finger, but the sound of Amy’s steady breathing helped him fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I promise quicker updates in the future! :D Comments are always ~~appreciated~~ straight-up treasured, and once again you are welcome to come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://rubbishyrubbishyrubbish.tumblr.com/) if you want to flail about Brooklyn Nine Nine or complain about how much tumblr sucks or whatever. ♥


	5. Chapter 5

It had been all of forty-eight hours since he had last set foot in the wizarding world, aka slightly less than a full weekend, but it was enough for Jake to feel like he really understood and appreciated what that Muggle singer Amy liked meant when she sang “You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.”

(“You really _don’t_ know what you got ‘til it’s gone,” he’d said the previous night, tearing up a little as he gazed out the window into the pouring rain.

“For the last time, Jake, I’m sorry I ate the last slice of pizza. But can you please stop microwaving your wet towels? That’s not how microwaves work.”

“ _You’re_ not how microwaves work.”

Then there had been a whole squabble about the proper uses of various Muggle appliances (Amy on toasters: not for reheating pizza; Jake on TV: that newscaster looks suspiciously like a basilisk in disguise, and I refuse to let my fake wife risk her real life by watching his show). In the end, they compromised by ordering more pizza.)

Anyway, it felt like Jake had been away for a lot longer than he actually had, which was why the response when he Apparated into Hogsmeade and entered the Three Broomsticks was so disappointing. Specifically, the total lack of response. No one stood and clapped, no one fell to the ground in a rapturous swoon or pulled him into a celebratory hug, and not a soul in the entire pub started setting off fireworks in honor of his presence. In fact, barely anyone looked at him. Here he was, casually risking his life in deep cover for the wizarding world’s very way of being, and every witch and wizard in the place acted as if he was just stopping by on his lunch break from the Ministry. (The fact that they had no way of knowing he _wasn’t_ just on his Ministry lunch break, of course, was incidental.) Some gratitude.

Still, it was nice just to see familiar sights, like a vampire doing the crossword and a witch who had clearly been eating too much pickled murtlap, based on her vividly purple ear hair. Jake even felt a rush of affection for the Weird Sisters track being played over the radio, which lacked the emotional nuance of that Muggle song but made up for it with screaming and ogre references.

Hank the bartender, at least, looked happy to see him. (Possibly because it was ten in the morning on a Wednesday and business was slow, but hey, Jake would take what he could get.) He ordered a Butterbeer and slid onto a stool, figuring he had time for one drink.

The previous day hadn’t yielded much in the way of new leads, and since time was of the essence, they’d decided to split up the investigative channels. Amy was back at 10 Downing Street, looking into the mole question, while Jake reentered the wizarding world in pursuit of intercepting more Pixie correspondence.

Hank slid him the Butterbeer, which Jake accepted with a nod of gratitude. He was taking a long drink—the first sip was always the best—when he noticed Hank had paused in wiping glass mugs and was giving him a strange look.

“When’d you get married?”

“What?” Jake used his left hand to wipe away the foam on his lip, which clued him in to the source of Hank’s reaction. “Oh. Um, yeah. Recently.”

Technically speaking, Jake was only undercover in the Muggle world; here, he was regular Jake Peralta, Auror and star Chaser on the intramural Ministry Quidditch team. But of course you never knew who might be listening, and Jake wasn’t really authorized to talk about any of his ongoing investigations to civilians, let alone something of this magnitude. He’d just have to remember to include Hank on one of those fun “Just Kidding!” tours after they’d solved this case. _Remember how I told you I was married? Just kidding!_ was at least better than _Remember how I told you I liked to fuck centaurs? Just kidding!_ which was an actual thing he’d had to explain to a waitress after one undercover mission.

“Is it Sophia?” Hank asked.

Jake did his best to look like that question didn’t hit him like a knockback jinx to the stomach. He probably didn’t succeed very well.

“Not so much,” he said, looking down at his Butterbeer for the extra cover it gave him. “We actually broke up a while back.”

“Couldn’t have been that long ago. I remember you guys in here just a couple of months back. This new thing must’ve been a whirlwind.”

“Ah, you know me. All romance petals and whirl…y…flerms…” Jake coughed.

Hank’s eyebrows looked like they were about to levitate right off his face.

“So who is she?”

“Amy Peralta.” Which, _what_? What was wrong with his mind lately? Next thing you knew he was going to be introducing Holt to people as Raymond Cozner or something equally insane.

“Santiago,” he corrected quickly. “I mean. She was Amy Santiago and now—anyway. Yeah. Her.”

Weirdly, Hank’s bemused expression seemed to disappear completely at that.

“Ah, gotcha. That makes sense.” Hank resumed his glass-wiping duties with an air of resolution, like every question he could think to ask had already been answered in full.

“It does?” Jake said, starting to feel like maybe Hank’s bemusement had been magically transferred to him. That was a thing, right? Magical emotional transference?

Hank shrugged.

“Sure. I mean, the timing’s a little surprising, but when you know, you know, right? I’m glad you two were able to figure things out.”

Jake didn’t really have a response to that other than total surprise and complete confusion, which if expressed would not have done much to help his cover. So it was a relief when the vampire at the other end of the bar spilled his tankard of blood. Hank went to clean it up, and Jake used the opportunity to down the rest of his Butterbeer, leave a handful of sickles on the counter, and head back out.

 

The worst person Jake had or would ever meet turned out to be named Jack Danger.

“Please, I go by Jackie. And it’s pronounced _Donger_ ,” Jack Danger said, and it was all downhill from there.

Luckily, Jake had picked up Charles from the apothecary—where he was buying some bat spleen to cook for dinner, a fact Jake could’ve gone his entire life without knowing—before heading to the Owl Post Headquarters, so at least he had someone to exchange _Is this guy for real?_ looks with. Unluckily, in addition to being the aforementioned Worst Person Jake Had or Would Ever Meet, Jackie Donger was also incredibly unhelpful.

“It’s just not possible for me to help you. For one thing, it’s against the sacred oath I swore as a postal worker. To never tamper, intercept, delay, avert, or otherwise interfere with a letter or package sent through our system. Every single day I uphold that oath. Do you think that’s easy?”

“Yes?” Jake said. “I mean, I didn’t even take an oath, and I don’t interfere with the mail all the time. Your whole promise is basically to do nothing.”

That earned him a glare.

“Secondly,” Donger continued, leveling Jake with an expression that was supposed to be…intimidating? Maybe?, “it’s not possible logistically. Owls are tough to intercept, whether they’re ours or privately owned. I mean, if owls could be tracked that easily, we’d never have to worry about tracking down escaped or missing persons again, would we? Just send them an owl! Then follow the owl! Problem solved! _No_.”

Donger slammed a hand on the desk. His brow was furrowed, his breathing heavy, his eyes darting between Jake and Charles like he had just snorted several kilos of sopophorous powder. It was obvious they had touched a nerve—or Donger had touched his own nerve. Whatever.

“I’ve actually always wondered that,” Charles said. “If a Death Eater escapes Azkaban, why not just write them a letter? The owl will be able to find them, owls can find anyone. Then—”

Donger made a noise much like a screech owl being strangled. Boyle shut up.

“Sorry for losing my temper,” Donger said, after closing his eyes and taking some deep breaths, exhaling sharply through his nose. “We owlies have been putting up with that question since the invention of tracking charms. It’s not that simple. Owls are complex and majestic creatures. They’re not, you know, _pigeons_.”

Donger raised his eyebrows meaningfully. Jake nodded, trying to look like he had any idea what the hell Donger was talking about.

“Totally. So you’re saying there’s no way to track owls at all? Even the one that was carrying this letter?”

“Was it one of ours?”

“We’re not sure. It was barn owl, on the smaller side, darker feathers, missing a talon on the left claw—”

“Adorable,” Charles put in, which Jake didn’t find that helpful.

Donger frowned.

“You know, it’s against Ministry law for _anyone_ to intercept letters meant for someone else.”

“We’re Aurors.”

“Yeah,” said Charles. “Also, it was mostly an accident. Terry stood up suddenly, and the owl flew right into his giant muscular back.”

“Can’t you at least tell us where the owl was coming from? Or heading to?”

“No can do, compadre.”

“Is there _anything_ you can do to help? Literally, anything?”

“Well, if the owl does turn out to be one of ours, we can make a note of anyone who uses it. But we can’t stop them or steal the letter. That would be—”

“Against your sacred oath, yeah, I get it. Just make sure you also keep your eye out for anyone trying to send a letter with this symbol on it.” Jake slid across the envelope the Society of the Pixie letter had come in, on which “Knarl” had drawn a stylized _SP,_ enclosed within a crude rendering of one of their masks.

“Fine,” Donger said. “But you should know, most of the owl post sent in this country never even passes through our office. More and more wizards own their own owls, and either way post gets delivered directly to its recipient with no further intervention. It’s all part of what makes our postal system so special.”

“Yeah,” Jake said, losing his temper. “Basically the owls do all the work and you just sit here polishing your Order of Merlin medal—wait, that’s actually pretty cool.”

“It’s actually an Order of _Marlin_ medal,” Donger said, turning it so Jake could see better. “They awarded it to me after a fish hit me in the face and I promised not to sue.”

“You are the worst person I have ever met,” Jake said. “I hope an owl craps on your head.”

It wasn’t Jake’s best-ever exit line, but Boyle still high-fived him for it once they were outside.

 

Charles wanted to go to the Three Broomsticks for lunch, but Jake didn’t relish seeing Hank again, because the whole way he’d reacted to Jake and Amy’s “marriage” had make Jake feel inexplicably weird. Instead, they Apparated back to Diagon Alley and got lunch at Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor, for the given value of “lunch” that meant “gigantic banana split.”

“Well, today’s been a bust,” Jake said, playing with one of those little sample spoons as they waited for their ice cream to arrive. (He’d been coming here since he was a kid, starting from the same year Sal had inherited the shop from Fortescue but kept the name. Through some classic Jake Peralta Boundary Pushing, he’d established that Sal would let him have up to six free samples before cutting him off. And after Jake’s dad left and Jake started coming on his own, rather than accompanied by an entire little league Quidditch team, Sal would let him have up to eight. Jake made sure to take full advantage of that pity every time he came.)

“Cheer up, Jake. It’s only lunchtime. Things could get better.”

“Maybe.” Jake blew out a breath. “I just wish there was a more dependable way to know when someone sends a letter with that stupid symbol on it. Hey, do you think it’s possible to put a Taboo on a written symbol? You know, that curse that reveals the location of anybody who says a certain word?”

Charles nodded.

“Yeah, like _succulent_.”

“No, Boyle, like _Voldemort_. We never actually put a Taboo on the word _succulent_ , we just told you we did.”

“Jake! You had me really scared. I accidentally called Genevieve _succulent_ when we were making love, and then I spent the whole rest of the night thinking Dementors were coming to get me. Then Genevieve started petting my Patronus—”

“Ew! Boyle! That’s way more than I needed to know.”

“What? I cast my Patronus as soon as I realized I’d said it, and we got bored waiting for the Dementors to show up.”

“Alright,” Jake said, an inflection he had stolen from Amy— _alright_ as in _please stop talking now_.

“I don’t know, Jakey. This might be a dead end until you can figure out either who’s sending the letters or receiving them. Without that, they’re gonna be hard to intercept.”

“I guess,” Jake said. _Dead end_ was possibly his least favorite phrase in the English language, right up there with _it’s out of our hands now_ and _weekend paperwork_. Although Amy _loved_ weekend paperwork, so now that they were married—

Fake married. Obviously. He definitely hadn’t forgotten that for a split second.

Sal arrived with their ice cream. Jake had barely lifted his spoon when he felt _himself_ being lifted up and folded into a hug.

“Congratulations, Jakey!” Sal said, squeezing Jake with surprising strength, given this was an elderly, short Italian man who mostly ate ice cream. “You’re married!”

Merlin’s beard. This again.

“Sure am!” Jake said when Sal let him breathe again. “Super married, for realsies.”

Sal beamed.

“Is it Sophia?”

“Nope, not her,” Jake said, maybe a little too quickly and a little too strangled. He was starting to think that hiring that dwarf to visit all his friends and acquaintances and sing about _Sophia and Jake, oh what a wonderful couple they make, they both like to eat cake, and up they will never break_ was a bad idea. (In retrospect, he also might not be an amazing songwriter.) The _We broke up!_ tour might actually be worse than the _Just kidding!_ tour. Even when he didn’t have a sudden marriage to explain.

“It’s Amy Santiago,” he said. It was practically becoming routine at this point.

“You’re kidding.” Sal looked gobsmacked, at least, which made more sense—oh, wait, no. He was actually smiling bigger than he had been before. And now he was tearing up.

“I’m so happy for you, kiddo,” he said, pulling Jake into another hug. Over Sal’s shoulder, Jake could see _Charles_ beaming, which was even less explicable, because Charles _knew_. Sal pulled back and put his hands on Jake’s cheek. “Oh, she’s a good one. Excellent, excellent. I always thought—I mean, there’s a spark, of course, I wasn’t going to say anything, but look at you! You pulled it off! You’re going to have such beautiful children.”

“Merlin,” Jake said, before he could stop himself. _Children_? He had barely gotten used to being fake married; he wasn’t sure he was ready to start having fake kids.

“Ice cream’s on the house,” Sal said, wiping away a stray tear, and went back behind the counter to serve the next customers, looking like Christmas had come several months early.

“The hell was that?” Jake said, sitting back down (and still feeling a little squeezed from the bone-cracking hugs). “Weird, right? Hank reacted pretty much the same way. Well—not quite so, you know, but similar.”

“What’s so weird about it?” Boyle asked, in that fake innocent way he had that wasn’t remotely convincing. “Are you upset that they’re buying your cover?”

“No, of course not. But—first of all, why would they both ask if it’s Sophia? I mean, as far as either of them knew, I was still dating Sophia. If you showed up tomorrow and said you were married I wouldn’t ask if it was to Genevieve, I would just _assume_ it was, because she’s the last woman I knew you were dating. Right?”

Boyle just took a bite of his ice cream. (An actual _bite_. It was chilling.)

“Secondly,” Jake went on, because he had more to say, dammit, even if he couldn’t quite explain why he was so worked up about this at all, “me and Amy? I mean, that’s gotta raise some red flags, right? That’s not believable.”

“Why not?” Jake had the distinct impression that Charles was prompting him to keep going—not in his usual supportive way, but like he was goading Jake to say something in particular. Which probably meant it was wisest to just stop talking, but in all his twenty-odd years on this planet, nobody had ever accused Jacob Peralta of being wise.

“Because,” Jake said, which might not be an entirely sufficient response. He sought for more solid ground. “Because…we’re so different. You know? And she’s—I mean. It’s _Amy_. Why _would_ it make sense?”

“Mm,” Charles said, whatever _that_ meant.

“It’s just weird, is all I’m saying.” Jake took a sullen stab at his banana split. He wasn’t sure why he was feeling sullen, but there it was. “Everybody is acting like they saw this coming. Even though it’s not even real.”

Boyle was silent for several moments. By Jake’s third spoonful of ice cream, it was officially Weird Enough that he had to look up. Charles looked like he desperately wanted to say something but was barely holding himself back. Jake raised his eyebrows.

“What?”

“Do—do you think you might be ready to date again?”

Jake had the distinct impression that that wasn’t what Charles had been itching to say.

“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it much. I mean—I’m not sure I’m completely over Sophia yet.”

“Really?”

“Well, yeah. I was in love with her.”

“ _Were_ you?”

Jake was starting to be concerned that Charles might have been hit with a Questioning Jinx, and was no longer able to form declarative sentences.

“Of course I was,” he said. “I told her I loved her, remember?”

“Yeah,” Charles said, sounding unconvinced. “But that was mostly by accident. And then it sort of seemed like you just went with it.”

“What, you don’t think I was?”

“I think you _thought_ you were,” Charles said, which, okay, was officially Enough, Jake was officially Done with this conversation.

“Well, even if I wanted to date, I’m ‘married’ right now, so it’s a moot point,” he said, firmly. To his surprise, Boyle just grinned.

“Exactly, Jake. You’re married, which means there’s only one person who you could plausibly date right now…”

Jake stared. Boyle grinned. Jake stared some more.

“You want me to date my wife?” he finally said, disbelieving.

“Why not?”

“ _Why not_? Charles, I just said why not. Because we’re opposites, and…the other reasons.”

Charles shrugged.

“I’m just saying, Jake. Hank sees it, Sal sees it. Maybe they’ve got a point.”

“They do not have a point.”

Jake stood up. He really wanted to do an emphatic walkout right now, but he also didn’t want to abandon his half-eaten banana split. He compromised by picking up the bowl to take with him. (Sal would trust him to bring it back, anyway.)

“You are being insane right now,” Jake informed Charles. “I’m going back to the Muggle world, where things make more sense. None of the portraits move over there. You know what that means? No stupid painting can give you the middle finger. Boom. Makes sense, don’t it?”

(If he was being entirely honest, there was a remote chance that it was _Jake_ not making any sense right now. But honesty was not the soup du jour. And screw you, that metaphor also made perfect sense.)

“I’m coming with you,” Charles said, standing up too. “I was going to visit my dad today anyway.”

“Well… _fine_ ,” Jake said, because he had the feeling that if he actually stormed out and abandoned Charles right now, somehow that would be playing right into his hand. Like he would just be proving Charles’ point. The best way to convince Boyle that his Jake-and-Amy-dating theory was crackpot was probably to have no reaction at all one way or another, but that ship may have already sailed.

“But you can’t have any of my ice cream,” Jake said, feeling like he had to take _some_ kind of stand, even if Boyle hadn’t actually asked for any. Still, he did look disappointed, which made Jake feel a little better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How's this for promptness!
> 
> The usual: your comments are my sun, moon, and stars ~~and fuel, upon which I feast in order to live another day~~ haha what? I'm not an alien creature who feeds on fic comments to survive. That's crazy; I'm human, like you people. Obviously.
> 
> And [my tumblr](http://rubbishyrubbishyrubbish.tumblr.com)! I'd love a more ~interactive fandom experience~, so please come talk to me! I need B99 friends ~~to feast on~~ to be friends with. Obviously. In a friendly human way. ANYWAY. ♥


	6. Chapter 6

The Society of the Pixie struck twice within the next week.

The first time very nearly caused an international incident. Several heads of state came to a closed-door meeting at 10 Downing Street to talk about…some vital issue or another, Jake couldn’t remember. (The environment? Trade policies? Time travel restrictions? Okay, probably not the last one, because: Muggles.) He, Gina, and Amy, along with a bevvy of “other” policy advisors and assistants to various dignitaries, sat in chairs around the edge of the room while the bigwigs sipped water and shuffled papers at the giant oak table in the middle.

It didn’t take long to notice that several of the dignitaries were acting…odd.

For one thing, the Prime Minister of Denmark kept making frequent, loud, and unprompted comments about the foreign secretary’s “terrible breath,” paying no apparent heed to the fact that said secretary’s face turned redder and redder every time she mentioned it.

And there was the way the King of Jordan outright said, ten minutes in, “We’re going to pretend to consider this deal for a few weeks, but the answer is definitely going to be no.” Even Jake, who kept reminding himself that Muggles Did Things Differently and he shouldn’t make any assumptions, felt pretty strongly that this couldn’t be good diplomacy.

By the time the French ambassador stood up to announce that he had to “piss like a racehorse,” that this was the most boring meeting he had ever attended, and that “look, that ugly man”—referring to the foreign secretary, who just could not catch a break—“keeps falling asleep,” Jake was pretty sure that something Was Up. A glance around the room confirmed that it wasn’t just his unfamiliarity with Muggle customs at work here: Amy looked horrified, for one thing, and Gina had on that _What the fuck_ look she usually reserved for anybody who claimed Celestina Warbeck wasn’t the greatest singing sorceress alive. All the Muggle assistants and policy advisors, too, looked deeply uncomfortable. Like, afraid-they-were-about-to-witness-a-full-on-brawl-between-a-bunch-of-wrinkly-diplomats uncomfortable.

Majors, who’d been standing silently in the corner, strode over to the table, picked up the Prime Minister’s glass of water, and took a tiny sip. (Jake heard Amy make an even tinier sound of distress beside him.) The dignitaries were too busy yelling at each other to notice. Majors crouched down next to Gina’s chair, so only the three of them could hear him.

“My real name…” Majors looked like he was struggling with himself, almost like he was trying to get past a Tongue-Tying Jinx. “…Is Wolfgang Powers.”

This time, Amy let out a (tiny) gasp.

“Veritaserum,” she whispered, eyes wide as galleons.

It took Jake half a second longer than it should have to understand. If it had taken him any longer, he would have been too late with the nonverbal Silencing Charm he cast, and Minister Cozner would have been able to finish his sentence. And considering that the sentence began, “Let me tell you all about the incredibly attractive man I met the other day, whose thighs—,” Jake really felt like Cozner owed him a favor. Whatever information he had been about to impart was probably not something he wanted his political rivals to have over him.

The question of _how_ the most powerful and expensive truth serum in existence ended up in the water pitchers was yet another to add to their already lengthy list. Their list of answers, meanwhile, held steady at zero.

The second Pixie incident was essentially a non-incident, also thanks to Majors. When half a dozen masked people appeared in a university auditorium and aimed their wands directly at Cozner, Majors sprung into action. He blocked the spells, put a shield around the Minister, and disarmed three of the attackers in less time than it took the Muggle student closest to Jake to say, “Whoa, killer laser show.” Unfortunately, the attackers Apparated away just as swiftly, leaving no trace of their intentions or identities behind.

(Jake’s fingers itched. He’d gone straight for his wand the second he noticed the first mask, operating on pure instinct, Auror training embedded deep into his nervous system. Only Amy’s hand on his arm, a firm grip, had stopped him. The look she gave him was _We can’t blow our covers_ and _I know, I want to too,_ and _This is very, very bad,_ all at once. He hadn’t known eyes could communicate so much. It was slightly alarming.)

“Look, I’m happy Cozner wasn’t hurt or anything,” Jake said. He and Amy were having one of their nearly nightly Pizza and Theorize nights. The pizza was starting to get repetitive—according to Amy, at least; Jake still thought it was the best thing since sliced cake—and lately the Theorizing got them nowhere, but it was still quickly becoming the highlight of Jake’s day. There was something inexplicably comfortable, easy, even _normal_ , about Amy Santiago curled up on the other end of his couch, getting pizza sauce everywhere as she talked animatedly about evidence and witnesses. (And then becoming alarmed when she realized what she had done re: pizza sauce.) At least, it felt normal until he caught a glimpse of the ring glittering on her finger, or even his own—and he remembered the whole Charles fiasco, and he started to feel weird and awkward, and then he just tried not to think.

“But it sucks that we don’t even know what they were trying to do,” he continued. “And now that they know the Minister has magical protection, they’re probably going to be more careful. Which is the opposite of what we need right now.”

“I know,” Amy said. She stretched her legs out, her feet nudging against Jake’s leg. “But even if we knew what they were trying, would it even help? Everything they’ve done so far has been so…random. There’s no pattern at all.”

“We know they like doing things in front of big crowds,” Jake said, a point they’d both said out loud at least twelve dozen times in the last ten days.

“Except when they don’t,” Amy pointed out. “What about the Veritaserum incident? That didn’t do anything to alert Muggles to the existence of magic, it just nearly started World War Three. Pass the parmesan?”

Jake did.

“Maybe we’re giving them too much credit. I mean, do they even have a coherent master plan? With the Veritaserum—hold on, I forgot to ask: _Wolfgang Powers_?”

Amy nodded, giggling.

“Dave Majors’ real name is _Wolfgang Powers_? I mean, what the fuck? That’s the most badass thing I’ve ever heard. Why would he change it?”

Amy shrugged. “Adds to his mystery?”

“And you knew, somehow. How the hell did you know?”

Amy turned a deep shade of red. She shrugged again, less convincingly.

“I do my research,” she said, that same leave-me-alone tone she’d used when Gina had waved a bottle of Amortentia under her nose and asked what she smelled. (The only answer they’d gotten out of her was “new binder smell” before she clammed up. Then Charles had said “maggot cheese” on his turn, which was apparently an actual Sardinian delicacy, and ruined the game for everyone.)

It occurred to Jake that Amy might actually be attracted to Dave Majors. Like, romance-wise. Romantically. Romantic stylez. Which—well, why wouldn’t she be? Jake felt a weird sinking feeling in his stomach, which he could only attribute to jealousy. He must be jealous of _Amy_. If she ended up dating Majors, Majors would definitely prefer her to Jake. Which would suck. Obviously.

Jake realized he was staring at Amy as she picked at the crust on her pizza, still flushed, and he quickly looked down at his own plate. He coughed a little, trying to clear his suddenly scratchy throat.

“Anyway,” he said, relentlessly steering the conversation onto safer ground. “It just doesn’t make sense. If all they want to do is tell the Muggles about magic, you’d think they’d go bigger. If _I_ wanted the whole world to know about magic, I could sure as hell do a better job than these clowns. The closest they’ve come is when they hit Cozner with that dumb Hair Loss Curse.”

Amy looked confused.

“How was that the closest they came?”

“‘Cause they caught it on video. Right? Gina told me that Cozner’s speech was being broadcast live around the world when it hit him. So everyone saw him go suddenly bald, and there’s no way the Ministry could track down everyone who was watching and modify their memories.”

Amy shook her head. “No, they just think it was some weird editing glitch or something. Gina showed _me_ headlines from the Muggle papers, and it was all just people making fun of the Minister’s ‘toupee.’ The thing to remember is that Muggles are really good at convincing themselves magic isn’t really magic—especially when their technology is involved. I feel like watching magic on film would actually be _less_ convincing for most of them.”

“Huh,” Jake said. He frowned. “Either way, the Hair Loss thing was definitely their stupidest attack. Although, side note, has his hair grown back? Or _has_ he been wearing a toupee?”

“No, Gina brought him a potion. I think. I guess it could be a really convincing toupee.”

“Remember when Hitchcock wore a toupee for a week?”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me. I still have nightmares about that thing. Like, literal nightmares. It always comes to life and tries to strangle me.”

“Whoa, very Froydian.”

“I’m surprised you’ve heard of Sigmund Freud.”

“Who’s Sigmund Freud? I was talking about Froyd Smethwyck. He was a Chaser for the Chudley Cannons until he was strangled in his sleep by a sentient wig.”

“Alright,” Amy said, unquestionably the _stop talking_ inflection.

Jake kept talking.

“You know who _else_ wore a toupee, was that guy you went out with. What was his name? Luke?”

“What? He did not.”

“He absolutely did. Come on, Amy. You think that was real?”

“ _Yes!_ ” Her voice had reached the high pitch of total indignation that Jake considered the holy grail of Amy Santiago-baiting.

Unfortunately for him, she struck back with a reference to the Healer he’d had weird Inferi fetish sex with, and then the whole conversation turned into a Who Has the Worst Dating History? game. They both lost. And then it was one in the morning, and since, as Amy pointed out, they weren’t likely to solve the entire Society of the Pixie conspiracy that night, they decided it was time to go to bed.

Jake had gotten really good at sleeping on his side at the very edge of the bed, eleven inches of empty space separating him from Amy. He couldn’t even say why it felt so important that they never touch—after all, he’d shared beds with Gina during countless sleepovers, triple-spooned with Charles and Terry after a literal giant sat on their tent during the Worst Camping Trip Ever, and even, on one occasion, crashed in Rosa’s bed, with Rosa in it. (He’d been drunk, she’d taken pity on him, she’d modified his memory so that he wouldn’t be able to relocate her apartment in the future.) He felt as close to Amy as anyone else on the squad, friendship-wise, but for some reason the idea of accidentally brushing up against her in their fake marriage bed felt utterly taboo. Based on her own sleeping position, she felt the same way. He awoke every morning with a pain in his neck.

 

They got up early the next morning to go check out a pocket Amy knew of from a previous case. Pockets, in street lingo, were little magical hotspots outside of official wizarding areas like Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade. Like the Leaky Cauldron, these patches of land—well, city, in this case—were enchanted to be unnoticeable by Muggles, whose eyes and ears slid right past. Tiny, temporary, and surrounded by Muggle territory, pockets were set up and used by criminals to trade black market items like dragon eggs and outlawed potions.

Amy had worked the Veritaserum-trafficking case several years earlier, putting the chances of that particular pocket still existing at basically zero, but they decided to give it a shot anyway.

They came up empty.

“You can barely even feel the residual magic,” Amy said. Complained, really. She was one short step away from _whined_. Jake could relate.

“They must have shut it down as soon as you arrested the main guy,” Jake said. “Not really surprising.”

“This sucks,” Amy said. He couldn’t disagree. The whole thing sucked. It sucked that they hadn’t gotten anywhere in almost two weeks. That if anything, they’d ended up with a less-solved case than they’d started with. It sucked doing everything non-magically, like Jake constantly had to tamp down the most innate part of him, to school the raging magic in his blood into a quiet reserve. And it sucked having this damn pain in his neck.

He opened his mouth to express some of this fury and frustration out loud.

“Let’s go get ice cream,” he heard himself say.

They went. Jake refused to take the subway again—once was more than enough, even if he lived to be 153 years old like Charles’ grandmother—so they walked. It only took them two minutes to find an ice cream shop, but another fifteen to find one that didn’t look like “a front for the Muggle mob,” according to Amy.

“You can’t pay with that,” she protested when Jake slid the little plastic rectangle Gina insisted was money across the counter. “That’s Ministry money. We’re only supposed to use it for necessities.”

“First of all, ice cream is very necessary,” Jake informed her. “Second, if you have any other form of Muggle money, be my guest.”

Amy looked down at her double scoop of chocolate ice cream covered in sprinkles, then back at him. Then back at the ice cream.

She let him use the card.

“Hmm,” Jake said, giving his best Thoughtful Face after taking a few experimental licks. They were back outside, meandering their way home. “It’s good, but not _Fortescue_ good.”

Amy made a nose of agreement.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, “Muggles totally have us beat in the pizza game. Big time. But ice cream, not even a contest. I don’t know what Sal puts in there, but it’s incredible. Unicorn blood? No, then we’d all be creepy and immortal. It just sucks that Muggles don’t have access to Butterbeer. I—Ames?”

He turned around, confused by the sudden realization that Amy was no longer walking beside him. She’d stopped about ten feet back, and was looking down at the ground, her mouth a perfect upside down “u”-shape. Jake followed her gaze to where two scoops of chocolate ice cream sat slowly melting on the sidewalk.

Jake couldn’t help it—he burst out laughing.

Her expression quickly shifted from Kicked Puppy to Annoyed Colleague. She stepped over the ice cream—which would’ve been a lost cause even if they could still use magic—to punch him in the arm.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he wheezed. Or tried to; she probably couldn’t understand him what with all the, you know, wheezing. Next he tried to arrange his features into a look of Serious Sympathizer, but the memory of Kicked Puppy face sent him right back over the edge.

“You’re the worst,” she informed him, which wasn’t fair. Jake knew who was the worst, and his name was Jackie Donger (or possibly the Vulture. Jake knew a lot of terrible people).

“Do you want to go back and get another?” he asked an indeterminate period of time later, when he could breathe again.

“Please, the idea of explaining _two_ ice cream cones on the credit card statement is bad enough. I don’t even want to imagine the look on Holt’s face if it’s three.”

“You don’t have to imagine, he’d look just like this,” Jake said, and then made his face as blank and inexpressive as possible.

She rolled her eyes, but he detected a hint of a smile. “C’mon, Peralta, keep walking,” she said, pushing him forward (much gentler than that punch earlier, thankfully).

“Here, do you want a taste of mine?” He held his cone out to her. “I swear I don’t have a fatal mouth disease.”

Amy gave him a weird look.

“Well, I wasn’t worried _before_ …” She took the cone from him and looked at it dubiously. “I’m actually more worried about the flavor. Isn’t this the stuff that turns your poop blue?”

“It’s bubblegum,” he said instead of answering, because he actually had no clue re: her question, and was now morbidly curious to find out. “It’s delicious.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Hey, if you don’t want it—”

Amy responded by practically shoving the ice cream into her face before he could grab it back.

“What the hell, are you trying to make out with it?” he said, laughing.

She wiped her mouth, looking a little rueful.

“It’s instinct. I grew up with seven brothers. If anybody tried to steal your food, the only option was go to kamikaze.”

“Your lips are insanely blue. You look like you’re dead.”

She puckered up at him, and he laughed again, wishing he knew how to take pictures with his phone.

“I should go see Healer Rossi,” she said, handing the cone back to him. “She’d be all over this.” She gestured to herself in a way that was supposed to be—sexy? Maybe? It involved a bit of hip rolling, at least.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Jake said. “You already made fun of me for Healer Rossi last night. There’s a limit on this kind of thing.”

He passed the cone back. She took a more normal lick this time.

“Not my fault you have terrible taste in women, Peralta. Except for Sophia, she was—”

Amy clammed up, looking horrified. Her eyes were even bigger than they’d been during the whole Veritaserum incident yesterday. It was actually pretty funny.

“It’s fine,” he assured her.

“Jake, I’m so sorry—”

“No, seriously, it’s fine.”

She was still giving him a Kicked Puppy look, only in this case, it was like she had kicked _his_ puppy and felt terrible about it.

“I’m fine,” he insisted again. He was a little worried that each repetition of the word “fine” made him seem _less_ fine, which would be a fair assumption, considering he’d said pretty much the same thing the day Sophia had broken up with him, when he was 100% absolutely _not_ fine. He really did mean it this time, though, for maybe the first time since that day.

“I was talking to Charles, and—” he said, then cut himself off, because _that_ was not a conversation he was eager to recount to Santiago, of all people. “Anyway. He made me realize that I might be ready to date again. After you and I get divorced, of course.”

“Right,” Amy said. “Well, good for you.” She smiled at him, a real smile, like she was genuinely happy for him. (He ignored whatever was happening in his stomach—probably just the blueification of his stomach contents, definitely nothing to do with feelings.)

They kept walking, trading the ice cream back and forth, because just as Jake refused to take public transportation, Amy refused to do the logical thing and Apparate.

(“But no one would even see, we’d duck into an alley or something and then Apparate right into our apartment.”

“Jake, what would the neighbors think if they saw us leave this morning and then never see us come back?”

“Do you really think anybody’s paying us that much attention?”

“I’m just saying, you can never be too careful. I used to live next to this little old lady who would slip pamphlets about sexually transmitted diseases underneath the door every time I had a guy stay over.”

“Amy Santiago, you tricky minx! I didn't know you had sex.”)

“Gina said these things can make maps or something,” Amy said, frowning down at her phone, ice cream cone in the other hand. “But I’m not sure how. Do you think we’re close?”

“Nah, we’ve still got another ten blocks or so to the Leaky Cauldron.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“This is near where I grew up,” he explained. “Just, uh—two blocks that way.”

“Ooh, really? We should make a detour!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, to see it? Aren’t you curious if it’s changed at all?”

Jake shrugged. “Not really.”

“Well, _I’m_ curious. What sort of place can breed both a Jake Peralta and a Gina Linetti? The mind boggles.”

Her tone was teasing, but she did seem genuinely curious, so Jake shrugged and made the turn. He grinned at her awkward pivot, a sure sign she hadn’t actually expected him to agree.

“It’s so weird to me that you grew up around Muggles,” Amy said. She was polishing off the last bit of waffle cone, her tongue darting out to catch an escaped drop of melted ice cream. “I never would’ve guessed. You always seem like the type of wizard who never thinks about Muggles at all. I’m not calling you a Pureblood Supremacist!” she hastened to add off his look of deep offense. “I just mean—you know those people who grew up in all-wizarding families, and they barely think about Muggles, just sort of see them as an abstract concept—you know, sucks that they don’t have magic or whatever, don’t have anything against them but wouldn’t want to be one. They never take Muggle Studies, never really think about the differences in culture, are just generally clueless? And if they _do_ have to venture out into the Muggle world for whatever reason, they don’t really make any effort to learn about the best way to blend in, they just wear pajamas or whatever and then loudly complain about how difficult it is to get anywhere.”

She was red in the face by the time she finished, the normal silence of a conversational pause made all the more acute by the impressive volume she’d reached by the last syllable. Jake was just glad he’d grown up in a neighborhood where people didn’t leave the house much, considering that their whole goal with this mission was to _maintain_ the International Statute of Secrecy, not break it themselves.

“I—I wasn’t actually accusing you of all that,” Amy said. “Sorry, I jut get—annoyed. Sometimes.”

“I get it,” Jake said, then immediately regretted it, because that wasn’t actually how you were supposed to express solidarity, was it? The whole point was that he _didn’t_ get it; he wasn’t Muggleborn and never would be. “I mean, you weren’t completely off the mark. I didn’t take Muggle Studies, and I really don’t think about the Muggle world that often. Up til now, obviously.”

“Sure,” Amy said, nodding.

Jake hesitated.

“Look,” he said, because fuck it, “I was born in Godric’s Hollow.”

“Really?”

“Yep. And it was—I mean, absolutely one of those all-wizard communities you just described. There were Muggles in town, obviously, but we were kind of grouped away from them. All my friends were witches and wizards. We had a Little League Quidditch team and everything.”

“Why’d you move?”

“My dad left.” He kept his tone deliberately light, a particular cadence he’d first memorized for imparting this tidbit of information when he was seven years old. The last thing he wanted was for Amy to make another horrified _I’m so sorry I brought that up_ face. “And my mom couldn’t afford the house anymore, so we moved here.” The _here_ in question came into view just then, conveniently enough. It looked exactly the same, as far as he could tell: a normal, slightly run-down apartment building. “Every morning before I woke up my mom would go into Diagon Alley to work in the shops. Usually she Apparated home for lunch, which was pretty much the most I saw of her, ‘cause she didn’t come home til way late.”

He could tell Amy was struggling against breaking into a full-on Pity Face, which he appreciated.

“The point is,” he said, determined to get this spur-of-the-moment rendition of the Jake Peralta Sob Story over with, “I was pretty resentful as a kid that we had to move—to leave behind my friends, our house, the ability to be open about magic in public. And I definitely translated that into a resentment of Muggles in general. I know that’s awful—”

“You were just a kid,” Amy broke in. “You didn’t know any better.”

Jake grimaced. Maybe she was right, but it was pretty hard to not feel shitty and guilty about it now.

“Not until I met Gina, anyway. Gina kind of turned my world upside down.” He chuckled. “I know she’s not always the nicest person, but she’s actually the reason _I’m_ not a total raging asshole. So, you know.”

“Sure,” Amy nodded. “Not a _total_ raging asshole.”

She caught his eye, smiled. Jake smiled back, feeling like—well, maybe _a weight lifted from his shoulders_ was a little over the top and cheesy, but something in that general realm. He didn’t tell the Jake Peralta Sob Story very often. He hadn’t even told it to Sophia, he realized—it just never seemed to come up.

“Jake?”

He turned. A tall woman with glossy hair was striding towards them, face lit up in that way that practically guaranteed she was about to say something along the lines of  _Fancy seeing you here!_ (Unless he said it himself, which he almost automatically did.)

“Jenny Gildenhorn!” he said instead, spreading his arms. “What the hell?” They hugged. In his peripheral vision he noticed Amy move a half step back, giving them space.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, stepping back and putting his hands on his hips, Ultra Casual style.

“Visiting my grandma!” Jenny said. “My parents moved out of the building right after I did, but Nana loved living here, so she decided to stay. Crazy, I know. I visit her like every weekend.”

Jake nodded, doing his best to look like a) this was all Brand New Information and b) he was not a crazy stalker. Between Jenny and Majors, he kept running into people who he kept ~~obsessive~~ casual tabs on, in the hope that things might work out a certain way in the future. Somehow he’d expected to be less caught off guard when those encounters actually occurred.

He realized he’d taken the Stand Around, Look Casual, Don’t Ask Her About Her Job at _Witch Weekly_ Unless She Specifically Brings It Up approach a little too far and should probably say something now.

“Hey, uh, Amy!” he said, grabbing for her somewhere behind him. She stepped forward and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze, like _I’m here, calm down, stop acting like a crazy idiot_. “Jenny, this is Amy. You guys might have met at Hogwarts?”

“I don’t think we ever did, but you definitely look familiar,” Jenny said, shaking Amy’s hand. “Let me guess: Hufflepuff?”

“Slytherin,” Amy said, all friendly smile.

“Ah, gotcha. Ravenclaw,” Jenny self-identified. “I think I do remember—did you used to spend a lot of time in the library?”

Jake laughed. Amy nodded, a little pink. Jake kind of wanted to tease her about it—but not now, right, now was Jenny.

“So what are you two doing here?” Jenny asked.

“Oh, uh—” Jake looked at Amy, trying to remember what exactly they _were_ doing here. He realized he’d failed to give the standard mission intro, the necessary precursor to that later _Just Kidding!_ tour. (Telling a woman he had romantic interest in that he was married still ranked way below the _sexually attracted to centaurs_ thing in terms of awkward undercover situations, at least.) “Well, Amy is—”

“A friend,” Amy broke in. She tugged on Jake’s jacket sleeve, pulling it down to hide the ring on his hand. Her own left hand was tucked behind her back. He looked at her in surprise, and she winked.

(Apparently this was just a day full of surprises, because he expected to feel relief but didn’t, for some reason. Yet another thing to feel for half a second and then shove into a dark corner of his mind, not to be reexamined under pain of death.)

“Right,” Jake agreed. “Amy’s a friend. And I was just showing her where we grew up.”

“Jake was just telling me about how both wizarding and Muggle families lived in this building,” Amy said. “That must have been interesting.”

Jenny laughed. “That’s one way to put it. But my Nana seems to like it.”

“Jenny’s Muggle-born,” Jake explained to a confused-looking Amy.

“It’s kind of a long story,” said Jenny. “Anyway, Jake, we should catch up sometime! I’m working at _Witch Weekly_ ”— _brand new information, brand new information,_ Jake reminded himself—“and things have been a little crazy lately, but I should have some free time starting this weekend. Send me an owl! It was super nice meeting you, Amy.”

“You too!”

With a smile and a wave, Jenny left.

“That was pretty cool, running into her like that,” Amy said, as they turned and started for home once more.

“Yeah, definitely.”

“What was that long story she mentioned? Was she just born to Muggle parents who already happened to live in a building full of wizards?”

“Not exactly. Jenny’s parents were…weird. About the whole magic thing. Like, they just straight-up refused to admit their daughter was a witch, even after whichever professor showed up to tell them she’d gotten into Hogwarts. They just homeschooled her instead, but since untrained wizards can’t exactly keep a lid on the whole magic thing, I think she was drawing them too much attention. So they moved her here.”

“Wow. How’d they even find out about this place?”

“Ummmm,” Jake said, like he was thinking, like he hadn’t memorized every detail of this girl’s life story when he was thirteen years old. “I think they saw an ad in the paper. Or Jenny saw an ad in the paper, and it was something only she could read—that’s how Mr. and Mrs. Alvarez used to attract magical tenants. When Gina and I first met her, her parents were still pulling the whole willfully ignorant act. But Jenny convinced them to let her go to Hogwarts after she accidentally flooded their apartment with ocean water. Complete with dolphins.”

“Considering untrained magic in general, that could’ve been much worse.”

“Yeah. So that was good, but—I mean, I was thirteen years old and basically in love with her. She didn't know _any_ witches or wizards besides me. I offered to show her the ropes when we got to Hogwarts, help her catch up with schoolwork—I figured I had it made. And then, I swear to Merlin, she showed up, got Sorted into Ravenclaw, and got together with Eddie Fung that very night. I never even had a chance to give her my sexy tour of the grounds.”

“‘Sexy tour?’ What would that even look like?”

“You know, take her to the Quidditch pitch, show off my moves… Take her to the edge of the Forbidden Forest and convince her that deer we just saw in the distance was actually a unicorn… Take her to the lake and introduce her to the giant squid.”

Jake dropped his voice a few octaves to say _giant squid_ , going for maximum sexiness.

“Wow, that _is_ super hot. I can’t believe she didn’t go out with you.”

“Right?!”

“Sucks about her parents, though.”

“Yeah. But I think they got better with time.”

Amy nodded. For reasons unknown, Jake kept having to resist the urge to reach out and take her hand. Clearly this whole fake marriage thing was getting to him. Or the whole not having a girlfriend anymore thing.

Or maybe it was just an Amy Santiago thing.

“What about your parents?” he asked, shoving his hands deep into his jacket pockets. “How’d they react to the whole thing?”

“What, me being a witch?” She shrugged. “Honestly, I think they were mostly relieved. To have an explanation for all the weird stuff, I mean. And kinda relieved to get me out of the house—not like they didn’t love me, of course, but eight kids is kind of a lot.”

“Kind of,” Jake agreed.

“It can be tough sometimes. You know, my life is so different from anyone else’s in the family, and it can be hard for them to understand—whether it’s my job, or some big accomplishment, or whatever else I have going on. They just don’t have the context. I mean, my sisters-in-law and nieces and nephews don’t even know about me being a witch, since the Statute is really strict about immediate family members only.”

“That sucks,” Jake said, which seemed to be the catchphrase of the day. He felt bad that he’d never really considered what it was like for Muggleborns, to be caught between two worlds.

“It does a little. Still, they’re really supportive even if they don’t always _get_ it, so I definitely consider myself lucky. Especially after hearing Jenny Gildenhorn’s story.” Amy shot him a quick smile. “You should owl her.”

“I will,” Jake said. But his stomach was doing weird things in response to Amy’s smile, and Charles’ dating advice had escaped from the dark corner of his mind where he’d banished it, and he was starting to enjoy the press of cold metal against his ring finger.

“I will,” he said, but he didn’t think he would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say thank you to everybody following along with this story chapter by chapter! Seeing people who commented on previous chapters take the time to comment on _new_ chapters never fails to make my day. (Of course, new readers/commenters make my day too! I guess my days are just being constantly made by the surprising and wonderful knowledge that anyone but me is interested in the self-indulgent mess that is this fic. ♥)
> 
> As always, I am available on [tumblr](http://ladililn.tumblr.com) if you want to say hi, or just want to see an ungodly amount of reblogged Jake/Amy gifsets. :)


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